{"id":36706,"date":"2019-06-12T14:15:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T21:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=36706"},"modified":"2019-06-12T14:15:46","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T21:15:46","slug":"afc-u-20-futsal-championship-iran-on-mission-to-defend-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/06\/12\/afc-u-20-futsal-championship-iran-on-mission-to-defend-title\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC U-20 Futsal Championship: Iran on mission to defend title"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tasnim &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR,<strong> Iran will be on a mission to defend its title when it hosts the second edition of the AFC U-20 Futsal Championship which kicks off on Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It will take a supreme effort to stop Iran though as futsal is hugely popular in the Central Asian nation and the senior team is ranked third in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 12 teams are drawn into four groups with Iran in Group A with Afghanistan, who it defeated in qualifying 4-2, the-afc.com wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hong Kong, who replaced Saudi Arabia after the West Asian withdrew, complete the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lebanon was a team in form in the Qualifiers, advancing with a perfect record and 15 goals scored but it will have to contend with Central Zone qualifying Group B winner Kyrgyz Republic and Thailand, the dominant team in Southeast Asian futsal, in Group B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Japan is the early favorite to seal one of the two quarter-final slots from Group C. Just like Iran, futsal is hugely popular in Japan and its national and club teams are always at the forefront in regional competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Japan, however, can expect to be tested as it faces Vietnam, who the East Asian defeated 3-1 in the 2017 edition group stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tajikistan, despite losing to Afghanistan in the Central Zone play-off, squeezed into the Finals as Iran had already made it through as host and will be aiming to make the most of the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iraq, runner-up in 2017, will be aiming to go one better this time around and will be confident of advancing from Group D despite having Indonesia and Chinese Taipei to contend with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chinese Taipei was impressive in qualifying, eliminating Mongolia and China while Indonesia fought off strong regional rival to claim the third ASEAN spot in the Finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All the matches will be played at the Pour Sharifi Indoor Stadium in Tabriz, northwest of Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Iran will be on a mission to defend its title when&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":36707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,88,169,86,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c15-futsal","category-iran-u20","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-c14-youth-teams"],"views":721,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36706","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=36706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36708,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36706\/revisions\/36708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}