{"id":35089,"date":"2019-01-18T18:05:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T02:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=35089"},"modified":"2019-01-18T18:05:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T02:05:16","slug":"sardar-azmoun-plays-down-iran-favorites-tag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/01\/18\/sardar-azmoun-plays-down-iran-favorites-tag\/","title":{"rendered":"Sardar Azmoun plays down Iran &#8216;favorites&#8217; tag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ABU DHABI, <strong>Iran national football team forward Sardar Azmoun has played down his side&#8217;s tag as &#8216;one of the favorites to win the AFC Asian Cup&#8217; underway in the UAE.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Team Melli are going to bring an end to 43-year title drought in the competition but the striker believes that the fans\u2019 expectations could make life difficult for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos Queiroz\u2019s team advanced to the Round of 16 as Group D winners after beating Yemen 5-0 and Vietnam 2-0 and a goalless draw against Iraq in the group stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIran will play Oman on Sunday and if we beat them we will play either China or Thailand but I really don\u2019t care who we will play,\u201d Azmoun said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI believe Iran are a good team but Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia and South Korea are also strong teams. The Iranian fans must help us to win but I think the expectations will put us under pressure. For example, the match against Iraq was not an important match but the fans and media provoked the players,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Azmoun is Iran\u2019s best goalscored in AFC Asian Cup with three goals but he says he doesn\u2019t care who scores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat is the most important is that we keep progressing in the tournament,\u201d Azmoun concluded.<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ABU DHABI, Iran national football team forward Sardar Azmoun has played down&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":35090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,84,89,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35089","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":1731,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35089","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=35089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35091,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35089\/revisions\/35091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}