{"id":39455,"date":"2020-06-15T09:11:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T16:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=39455"},"modified":"2020-06-15T09:11:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T16:11:45","slug":"nekounam-was-highly-rated-at-osasuna-john-aloisi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/06\/15\/nekounam-was-highly-rated-at-osasuna-john-aloisi\/","title":{"rendered":"Nekounam was highly rated at Osasuna: John Aloisi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>AFC &#8211; SYDNEY, <strong>John Aloisi may not have shared a dressing room with Javad Nekounam, but he knows plenty about his fellow former Osasuna player.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former Australia striker Aloisi scored 37 goals in 129 appearances for the club from 2001 to 2005, while IR Iran\u2019s Nekounam, who joined in 2006, would go on to become a fan favourite over two stints and nearly 200 matches for Los Rojillos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The duo &#8211; alongside another former Iranian Osasuna star, Masoud Shojaei &#8211; are both in the running for this week\u2019s Asia\u2019s Greatest Players in Spanish Football poll, and according to Aloisi, Nekounam was a highly respected figure at the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI am very familiar with Nekounam, because he was a really good midfielder at Osasuna,\u201d Aloisi told&nbsp;<strong><em>the-AFC.com<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;from Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe supporters really liked him, but also the players that I spoke to rated him very highly. He was able to dictate the tempo of the game but also, defensively he was brilliant. He could run all day, and he suited the way that the team and Spanish football was.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cUsually the Spanish look more to South America for foreigners because it\u2019s an easy transition for the players. They adapt very well, but slowly the Asian market is opening up, because they realise there are technically very good players in Asia who are very tough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey can push throughout difficult situations and they don\u2019t give up because they\u2019ve come through a very different background. I think that\u2019s why the Iranian players did well in Spain, especially at Osasuna.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asian players in La Liga were few and far between when Aloisi joined Osasuna in 2001, but fast forward nearly two decades and there is a significant and growing Asian presence in the Spanish top flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; SYDNEY, John Aloisi may not have shared a dressing room with Javad Nekounam,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":39456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,142,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-memory-lane","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1054,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39455","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=39455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39457,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39455\/revisions\/39457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}