{"id":36787,"date":"2019-06-19T19:58:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T02:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=36787"},"modified":"2019-06-19T19:58:53","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T02:58:53","slug":"afc-u-20-futsal-championship-sf-iran-vs-japan-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/06\/19\/afc-u-20-futsal-championship-sf-iran-vs-japan-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC U-20 Futsal Championship: SF &#8211; Iran vs Japan [Preview]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>AFC &#8211; TABRIZ, \u00a0<strong>Islamic Republic of Iran are two matches away from defending their AFC U-20 Futsal Championship title, but will face a daunting challenge in the form of Japan in the semi-finals at the Pour Sharifi Stadium on Thursday.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Goals scored: 13<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conceded: 7<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Top scorer: Salar Aghapour (5 goals)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two goals in extra time proved the difference as host nation Iran beat Lebanon 3-2 in the quarter-finals. Iran had taken an early lead, but an array of missed chances and countless strikes against the frame led to Lebanon pushing the game into extra time with a last minute goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Head coach Hamid Moghadam, however, was not disheartened by his side\u2019s lack of finishing, as he praised his players for creating chances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNot scoring goals and creating chances are two different things, because sometimes you create chances but you\u2019re just not lucky,\u201d Moghadam said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s futsal, sometimes your player finishes, and sometimes they don\u2019t hit. We lost so many chances, and hit the upright so many times, I lost count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEach match played in a tournament or even friendly adds experience to the players. Of course, in this match, we gained experience, and this was added to our previous experience, which helps the overall improvement.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Moghadam understands that Japan pose a different threat compared to Lebanon, the 42-year-old coach is going into the semi-final as if it\u2019s the final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is going to be our fourth final. We will, of course, prepare to play against Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThailand were eliminated from the competition and anything is possible in futsal, that\u2019s the beauty of it. We want to beat Japan, and we want to win the title.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TABRIZ, \u00a0Islamic Republic of Iran are two matches away from defending their AFC&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":36788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,88,169,86,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36787","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":777,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36787","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=36787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36789,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36787\/revisions\/36789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}