{"id":35279,"date":"2019-01-27T17:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T01:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=35279"},"modified":"2019-01-28T08:47:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T16:47:11","slug":"shojaei-urges-ir-iran-to-maintain-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/01\/27\/shojaei-urges-ir-iran-to-maintain-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Shojaei urges IR Iran to maintain focus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AFC – AL AIN,, Masoud Shojaei has warned his Islamic Republic of Iran teammates to keep their focus on their semi-final meeting with Japan in Al Ain on Monday, despite admitting he dreams of taking the AFC Asian Cup trophy home to Tehran at the end of the week.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Samurai Blue stand between the Iranians and a first \nappearance in the final of the AFC Asian Cup since Team Melli claimed \nthe last of three consecutive titles in 1976, with either Qatar or hosts\n the United Arab Emirates waiting in Friday\u2019s final.See also :
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m very happy and proud to be here and we are fully prepared for \nthe game,\u201d said the veteran midfielder. \u201cWe can\u2019t wait for the game to \nstart and there\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s going to be one of the best games of the\n tournament. We will put all the difficulties behind us and we\u2019re happy \nand proud to play in the semi-final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur\n only target is to stay focused and prepare for the next game. We take \neverything game-by-game and we\u2019re only thinking about our next game and \nthat\u2019s against Japan. That\u2019s all that matters for us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, our coach is thinking about the analysis of other games, \nbut we\u2019re only thinking about this game. We have played some good teams \nat this tournament but we haven\u2019t thought about games that we have \nplayed before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\n are paying attention to every detail. Qatar and UAE are great teams and\n they\u2019re going forward, but we\u2019re only thinking about our own game \nagainst Japan and we\u2019re fully focused on that.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran are appearing in the semi-finals of the AFC Asian Cup for the \nfirst time since losing in a penalty shootout to China in 2004 and the \nnation also fell at the last four hurdle when the tournament was last \nheld in the United Arab Emirates in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\n Shojaei harbours hopes that Iran can see off the Japanese and, \neventually, prevail in the final to end more than four decades of \ndisappointment for the country\u2019s football fans.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are all very hopeful that we can achieve success, taking into \nconsideration that the UAE and Qatar are good teams and Japan are always\n one of the favourites,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut\n we all hope after 43 years that we can do this task. We have to beat \nJapan, but after that we hope we can bring happiness and pride to our \npeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs I always joke with my teammates, we are hoping we can bring our little friend, the Asian Cup trophy, home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – AL AIN,, Masoud Shojaei has warned his Islamic Republic of Iran teammates to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-asian-cup","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":1028,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35279","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35279"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35292,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35279\/revisions\/35292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}