{"id":44853,"date":"2022-01-27T14:28:36","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T22:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=44853"},"modified":"2022-01-27T14:28:36","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T22:28:36","slug":"many-underestimated-me-but-i-proved-myself-skocic%ef%bf%bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2022\/01\/27\/many-underestimated-me-but-i-proved-myself-skocic%ef%bf%bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Many underestimated me but I proved myself: Skocic\ufffc"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Iran football team Dragan Skocic says that many underestimated him during the past two years but he proved himself with hard work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the guidance of the Croatian coach, Iran became the first Asian team to book its place in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran defeated Iraq 1-0 on Thursday in Tehran\u2019s Azadi Stadium in Group A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iran will participate in the prestigious event for the sixth time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFirst, I would like to congratulate my players since they showed an excellent performance against Iraq. I am very happy since I could make the Iranian people happy. It\u2019s our pleasure,\u201d Skocic said after the match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt took 15 minutes to find our tempo and then we were the dominant team and created so many chances. We could have scored more than one goal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe had some difficulties prior to the match since we missed some players after they got infected with COVID-19 and also our European-based players joined us late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Skocic replaced Mark Wilmots in February 2020 but was under heavy pressure from the critics. He registered an excellent record of 13 wins out of 14 matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI believed in my work from the beginning but many underestimated me and didn\u2019t respect me but I\u2019m very happy because I\u2019ve proven myself,\u201d Skocic added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI am under contract with Iran football federation until 2023 and my plan is to lead Iran football team in the 2022 FIFA World Cup,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Iran football team Dragan Skocic says that many underestimated him during&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":44854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,92,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44853","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-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":2341,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44853","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=44853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44855,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44853\/revisions\/44855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}