{"id":38465,"date":"2020-01-18T18:15:26","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T02:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=38465"},"modified":"2020-01-18T18:16:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T02:16:14","slug":"iranian-clubs-to-quit-afc-champions-league-over-home-game-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/01\/18\/iranian-clubs-to-quit-afc-champions-league-over-home-game-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian clubs may quit AFC Champions League over home game ban"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>BBC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Iran&#8217;s four teams in the Asian Football Confederation Champions League say they will refuse to play if they cannot host home games, says the Mehr news agency.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Football&#8217;s governing body in Iran has claimed the confederation (AFC) had banned its teams from staging fixtures in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It said the AFC wanted fixtures involving Iranian teams to take place at neutral venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The move comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Iranian football federation said it would announce a &#8220;final position&#8221; in the &#8220;following days&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran has four teams &#8211; Persepolis, Esteghlal, Sepahan and Shahr Khodro &#8211; in the AFC Champions League, and they are expected to be consulted on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the Mehr news agency said the clubs will send a joint letter to the AFC to say they will drop out if they cannot host games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Persepolis\u00a0and\u00a0Esteghlal\u00a0insisted they were in the &#8220;safest country in the Middle East&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the meeting, Persepolis chief executive Mohammad Hassan Ansarifard told the Mehr news agency the club will &#8220;certainly not participate&#8221; in the new Champions League season &#8220;if they insist on their decision&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amir Mehdi Alavi, a spokesman for the Iranian football federation, said: &#8220;Iran has the full readiness to host teams and has proven this repeatedly in recent years.&#8221;<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BBC &#8211; TEHRAN, Iran&#8217;s four teams in the Asian Football Confederation Champions League say they&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":38466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,173,84,92,164,136,91,172,165,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-esteghlal","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-c20-other-news","category-persepolis","category-persian-gulf-pro-league","category-sepahan"],"views":1176,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38465","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=38465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38468,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38465\/revisions\/38468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}