{"id":38196,"date":"2019-12-22T08:59:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=38196"},"modified":"2019-12-22T08:59:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:59:10","slug":"ffiri-wastes-time-choosing-new-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/12\/22\/ffiri-wastes-time-choosing-new-head-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"FFIRI wastes time choosing  new head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0<strong>The<\/strong> <strong>Iran football federation has yet to choose the new head coach for Team Melli and it seems to be such a waste of time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With three months remaining until the restart of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification, the Iranian federation has not introduced the new head coach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Wilmots left his role as coach of Team Melli in early December, just seven months after replacing Carlos Queiroz at the helm of the three-time Asian champions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran football federation and Wilmots\u2019s contract is considered to be ambiguous and the deal will only serve the Belgian coach\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The football federation has yet to answer the questions and has not yet appointed the new head coach as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Branko Ivankovic, who led Iran to the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, has been heavily linked with a return to the post but two parties have remained silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran will have four must-win matches in late March and early June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Team Melli will entertain Hong Kong on March 26 in Tehran and will meet Cambodia five days later in an away match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran will face Bahrain and Iraq on June 4 and 9 in Tehran.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Team Melli, who are going to continue their quest for a sixth World Cup appearance, sit five points behind leaders Iraq in Group C but having played one game fewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The eight group winners and four best runners-up will advance to the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Finals and the final round of qualifying for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next best 24 teams from the second round of the joint qualifiers will compete in a separate competition for the remaining 12 slots in the 24-team AFC Asian Cup China 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0The Iran football federation has yet to choose the new head coach&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":38197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,92,91,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c20-other-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":1190,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196","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=38196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38198,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196\/revisions\/38198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}