{"id":40188,"date":"2020-08-31T16:40:05","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T23:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=40188"},"modified":"2020-08-31T16:40:05","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T23:40:05","slug":"afc-hype-builds-for-hazfi-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/08\/31\/afc-hype-builds-for-hazfi-cup-final\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC: Hype builds for Hazfi Cup final"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>Esteghlal and Tractor are edging closer to Thursday\u2019s Hazfi Cup final.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Islamic Republic of Iran\u2019s long, unique 2019-20 football season has one match remaining, with Esteghlal and Tractor to meet in the Hazfi Cup Final on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The teams secured their respective places in the decider with wins in last week\u2019s semi-finals. Tractor beat Naft Masjed Soleyman 1-0, but it was Esteghlal\u2019s success over Persepolis in the other semi-final which captured much of the attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Tehran sides played out a superb, see-sawing battle at an empty Azadi Stadium, with Esteghlal equalised at 2-2 in injury time, before emerging from a nerve-shredding penalty shootout as winners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Esteghlal finished second in the recently completed Iran Pro League, three points ahead of fourth-placed Tractor, who are chasing just their second Hazfi Cup title, with their previous win coming in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their opponents, on the other hand, are the competition\u2019s most successful team. Esteghlal have lifted the Cup on seven occasions, including five times since 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Esteghlal and Tractor are edging closer to Thursday\u2019s Hazfi Cup final&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":40189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,164,136,135,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-irans-hazfi-cup","category-c14-ipl-league-persian-gulf-cup"],"views":998,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40188","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=40188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40190,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40188\/revisions\/40190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}