{"id":34620,"date":"2018-12-22T13:33:35","date_gmt":"2018-12-22T21:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=34620"},"modified":"2018-12-22T13:33:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T21:33:35","slug":"afc-asian-cup-2019-premier-league-stars-who-can-light-up-the-competition-alireza-jahanbakhsh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/12\/22\/afc-asian-cup-2019-premier-league-stars-who-can-light-up-the-competition-alireza-jahanbakhsh\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC Asian Cup 2019: Premier League stars who can light up the competition [Alireza Jahanbakhsh]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Fox Sports Asia &#8211; BRIGHTON, <strong>Players from around the globe will converge in the Gulf nation of United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the AFC Asian Cup 2019&nbsp;where Asia\u2019s best will be decided.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tournament will span almost a month kicking off on January 5 and concluding with the crunch finale on February 1 at the Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi with the new Asian champions crowned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As they look to lift the coveted trophy, every Asian nation has summoned their best talents, including a few who play in \u2018the best league in the world\u2019 \u2014 the Premier League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here,\u00a0FOX Sports Asia\u00a0takes a look at eight Premier League stars who can lead their country\u2019s march to glory in the AFC Asian Cup 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALIREZA JAHANBAKHSH (Iran, Brighton &amp; Hove Albion)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Iranian forward made a move to England following three seasons with Dutch club AZ Alkmaar \u2014 his scintillating final season with AZ seeing him score 21 goals to become the league\u2019s top scorer. He is still adjusting to the pace and physicality of the Premier League, but has already made 10 appearances for the club \u2013 four of them from the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Iran gaffer Carlos Queiroz will be hoping that his striker will put in what he has learnt among the big boys to his team\u2019s advantage&nbsp;at the Asian Cup in January. The 25-year-old is yet to win a silverware at the senior international stage and will be hoping to break that duck in UAE come February 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fox Sports Asia &#8211; BRIGHTON, Players from around the globe will converge in the Gulf&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":34621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,84,89,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-asian-cup","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":1364,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34622,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34620\/revisions\/34622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}