{"id":38684,"date":"2020-02-16T08:49:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T16:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=38684"},"modified":"2020-02-16T08:52:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T16:52:28","slug":"al-ahli-esteghlal-aim-to-build-on-opening-matchday-draws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/02\/16\/al-ahli-esteghlal-aim-to-build-on-opening-matchday-draws\/","title":{"rendered":"ACL: Esteghlal aim to build on opening matchday draws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tasnim &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>Al Ahli of Saudi and Esteghlal of Iran will aim to build on their opening matchday draws when they meet in Group A of the 2020 AFC Champions League on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two sides had picked up their first points on the road last week, with Al Ahli settling for a draw at Al Wahda FSCC, having led until the 90th minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Esteghlal, meanwhile, walked away from Al Shorta\u2019s den with its first point of the campaign in another 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both teams are in the AFC Champions League group stage for the 11th time in their history, but Al Ahli boast a significantly better record, advancing to the knock-out stages on seven occasions, to Esteghlal\u2019s four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Al Ahli\u2019s best performance in the competition came in 2012, when the team went all the way to the final, before losing to Korea Republic\u2019s Ulsan Hyundai 3-0 in the final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Esteghlal\u2019s best run came a year later, when it reached the semi-finals and lost to FC Seoul 4-2 on aggregate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike their opponents, the Tehran giant is a former continental champion, with two Asian Club Championship titles to its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1970, the Blues won the championship, and 21 years later, they tasted glory again, edging China PR\u2019s Liaoning FC 2-1 in the 1990-91 final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The match will be held at the Jaber Al Ahmed International Stadium in Kuwait City on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Al Ahli of Saudi and Esteghlal of Iran will aim to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":38685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,173,84,164,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-esteghlal","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division"],"views":724,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38684","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=38684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38691,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38684\/revisions\/38691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}