{"id":68522,"date":"2018-06-11T13:56:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T08:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=68522"},"modified":"2018-06-11T13:57:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T08:57:43","slug":"argentina-football-association-president-tapia-sights-world-cup-semi-final-berth-as-primary-objective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=68522","title":{"rendered":"Argentina Football Association President, Tapia sights World Cup Semi Final berth as primary objective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Buenos Aires, June 11 (TNS): Argentine Football Association (AFA) president Claudio Tapia has said that making it to the semi-finals of the upcoming FIFA World Cup remains their primary objective heading into the showpiece event.<\/p>\n<p>With just a few days to go to the World Cup, Argentina are not considered as favorites as they struggled through qualifying for the prestigious tournament.<\/p>\n<p>However, Tapia believes reaching the semi-finals is a good target for the country, who are set to lock horns with Iceland, Croatia and Nigeria in Group D.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being in the top four is a positive goal,&#8221;said the AFA president.<\/p>\n<p>Star striker Lionel Messi, who has already guided Barcelona to La Liga and Copa del Rey title this season, will once again lead Argentina.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Messi is yet to clinch a World Cup trophy for the nation, Tapia dubbed the forward as the world&#8217;s best.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He gives a lot to Argentine soccer, let&#8217;s face it. The growth we have in the AFA is because we have the best player in the world,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Argentina will look to begin their campaign on a promising note when they take on Iceland in the opening match of the World Cup in Moscow on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>(TNS\/ANI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Buenos Aires, June 11 (TNS): Argentine Football Association (AFA) president Claudio Tapia has said that making it to the semi-finals of the upcoming FIFA World Cup remains their primary objective heading into the showpiece event. With just a few days to go to the World Cup, Argentina are not considered as favorites as they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68525,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522\/revisions\/68525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}