Observations about UEFA 2008

[Ali Chicago]

I hope you guys don't mind me opening this thread. These days, I am trying to watch all of the games of UEFA. I try to stay away from Radio, papers and Web as much as possible to not see the results (so please don't post the results here).

Our beloved TM is going through the first stage of qualifications as well at the same time. I just couldn't help it but to make parallels and draw conclusions as I watch both. I was wondering if we can use this thread to record our observations feelings as you watch these games.

While this isn't an attempt to limit the scope and creativity of the members or posts in this thread, I strongly suggest to focus on the so called weaker/developing European teams (Turkey, Greek, Austria 93rd in the FIFA ranking, Switzerland).

There are enough gripe about incompetent IFF and lack of fields and unprofessional club management in so many other threads, so I request while one can't help it but to notice these structrual issues of our football, at least in this thread let's focus on other issues.

As starter I suggest we focus on the following (please feel free to add to these if you like):

• what can we learn from these teams
• Compare Technical abilities of the players
• Compare tactical abilities of the players
• Games reading by coaches
• Teams subs or formation change during the game without any substitution
• Lookign forward for a healthy dialogue.
• Regardless of the result level of play specially by the loosing team
• If in your opinion the team follow the Joga Bonita Moto or plays a boring football?
• Any other issue you think can be educational.

Looking forward for a healthy dialogue and exchange of experiences.

[Doctor DOOM]

1- the most apparent matter for me has been how all the teams SHOOT so well, from close and long range.

and how that contrasts with our pathetic shooting stats , which is like 1 or maximum 2 per game , which arent even on target !!!

ours, in contrast like to dribble and do an iranian "ye pa do pa" into the goal !!!!! idiots !



2- the second one is how incisive the counterattacks are. again another stark contrast.

3- and lastly, the freekicks, although not many goals so far off them, but they usually look so well thought of.
ours?
hah ! pathetic doesnt even start to describe our situation when it comes to freekicks

[Ali Chicago]

LOL at ye pa doo pa, havn't heard that used by other people since I left Iran and brought back good memories. While on the dribbling issue, When I was a kid and played in Iran, all the dirbbling moves had specific street name. One of them was yek pa doo pa another one was "keshooyee". I saw Shojai tried to do the move against the UAE player (again good memories).

[zzgloo]

Ali jaan......dast roo delam gozashti !

( by the way )....please,keep starting new threads....as payman & I, are rounning out of ideas !!!

What sets our games with thiers, more than anything, In my opinion....
is the level of intelegence !,and psycological control,and maturities.

I do not think, our differences have anything to do with physical talents....

giveing good passes, requires better vision.
giveing better passes, requires better psycology.
and has less to do with, ability to shoot stright.

not missing scoreing chances, and kicking out of box, has more to do with psycology than physical abilities.

learning from coaches, and being coachable has alot to do with intelegence and maturities.
.................................................. ............

I also have some theories as how super talenst are shaped...and can be made...which I get to it in a later post.

[Ali Chicago]

Ali jaan......dast roo delam gozashti !
( by the way )....please,keep starting new threads....as payman & I, are rounning out of ideas !!!
What sets our games with thiers, more than anything, In my opinion....
is the level of intelegence !,and psycological control,and maturities.
I do not think, our differences have anything to do with physical talents....
giveing good passes, requires better vision.
giveing better passes, requires better psycology.
and has less to do with, ability to shoot stright.
not missing scoreing chances, and kicking out of box, has more to do with psycology than physical abilities.
learning from coaches, and being coachable has alot to do with intelegence and maturities.
.................................................. ............
I also have some theories as how super talenst are shaped...and can be made...which I get to it in a later post.

Bahram Jaan;

From some hands on experience I have from coaching youth soccer, I suggest in football there is more than what meets the eye.

Just as an example, passing. One of the typical complainst whenever I played with Iranians is everybody complains everybody else is Khoreh and doesn't pass. While there is an element of turth into it, there is a fundemental issue that most ignore and that is:

The fact that most Iranian play football don't move without the ball. It has roots in the street football of gol kochik in the streets where there wasn't much room to move in the first place (hence so much emphasis on dribbling to get through tight spaces).

In one of the course I took, they gave a great example. The guy did a study and according to him during the whole soccer game, he calculated how long ball is going out of bound, how long is in flight, howlong is between the passes between players, injury and substitution time all that and subtracted all that from 90 minutes. Then divided that by 22 and according to him, a soccer player if he is a superstar during the whole game has about 2 minutes the ball at his foot. According to him the rest 90-2 - whatever wasted time= about 60 minutes of active playing time, the player still needs to be actively playing without the ball. This was an eye opener to me.

So playing without the ball, running without the ball and putting yourself in a good position, running into the space where the ball is being put there nad not your feet. Most of these are lacking in our football in big part due to gol kocheek mentality and base of our football. Hope now you see the relevance of why these other guys pass so well and we don't?

I post my thoughts about Italy Holland and Germany Croatia Poland Austria, Turkey Swiss tomorrow.

[Hajagha]

Conecting to Peyman's Positive Thinking thread, I can see how much Italy and France tried to be positive and got punished by Netherland.

Netherland played with only one stricker and scores 7 goals and France played with 3 strickers and scored only 1.

Another point, Netherland didn't even qualify for WC and whooped both finslists' a$$es in Euro. So, when you guys try to bring history and say we are the power house of Asia or such, try to not going more than 10 days back.

Cheers,

[Doctor DOOM]

^ actually that's called : PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS

[Hajagha]

^ actually that's called : PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS

I tell you a joke, then try to connect it to your statment:

Tork was asked to make a sentence with "Tokyo". He said "I love Sakineh, tou-kio?"

You can't grab some tactical moves from Holland, or any other teams and connect it to some other things in Iran, or can you?

[mkbf2]

My lone observation:

We will never become anything like Holland. They played with so much discipline. Did anyone see in the first half when they had 9-10 straight and clean passes to each other. It was a marvel of pure European football. I am afraid Iran will never attain this level of advancement in class and technique.

Also I would like to pose a question to everyone:

If we were playing Holland, would Iran have lost by the same margin of 4-1 or 3-0 like France and Italy did respectively? I think we actually wouldn't come out worse than those two did.

[shayan20]

good thread.

I've watched more than half of the games and one common thing I can see in all the team is that they can execute simple passes and every player knows exactly what he has to do.
These two factors might sound very simple but seriously I haven't seen that from our Team Melli for a long time. We continue to play "deymi" football, "bekesh ziresh". The last time I remember we actually played with purpose and a plan was during Branko's time, specially in the AC04.

as Doctor said, all the teams can shoot, they have at least 2-3 players who can shoot from outside the yard and hit the target while we hardly see our players take a shot in a single game let alone hitting the target.

[Doctor DOOM]

reza jan, I am talking about coaches deciding their team tactics NOT based on what the other team looks like, .. NOT based on the other team's strengths or weaknesses, .. NOT based on what others do in such situations .

They shd do it according to their STRONG POINTS.
FIRST, you emphasize yur own strengths and build your team, line up and tactics around what you are GOOD AT.
You always cover your strong areas first.

no matter who you are.
if your players are strong in defense and defending, then by all means play to this and emphasize ur defensive strategies, build ur team around it. much like the Italians who are magnificent in defending or the greek, who emphasize their superior physical attributes and defensive postures.
or if you are an attacking team, then you arrange your line ups knowing attacking and offense is what you excel at and you base ur strategies on that.

if your nature is one thing and try to adopt the opposite, what happens is what we see in Iran.
our football, naturally is an offensive one.
and we've ( meaning the past 5-6 years ) been trying so hard to become a defensive team. and the result is this abomination that not only has not become a tight defensive team impenetrable ( unless we play pisspoor teams ) , we also have forgotten our strengths and arent scoring goals that we used to .... by the handful , mind you !!!!

talk about falling in between the stools !


==========

I am not saying we CAN play like holland anytime soon.
in fact I'm not even bothered about what holland did or what greece did or ... .
this was about doing what you are good at and building ur team around that.

[Adesor Vafaseya]

My lone observation:

We will never become anything like Holland. They played with so much discipline. Did anyone see in the first half when they had 9-10 straight and clean passes to each other. It was a marvel of pure European football. I am afraid Iran will never attain this level of advancement in class and technique.

Also I would like to pose a question to everyone:

If we were playing Holland, would Iran have lost by the same margin of 4-1 or 3-0 like France and Italy did respectively? I think we actually wouldn't come out worse than those two did.

today's Iran would have done worse for sure versus Holland.
In general, whenever I see them play, it looks all so academic and rational whatever they do.
Dutch players are more academic players than any other football nation IMO. In addition to that they are magnificient footballers of course.

[yashar_fasihnia]

great observations here!

i would like to add one more point and that is, THE DISTANCE THESE PLAYERS RUN AND COVER!

almost every european player runs around 11kms for 90 mins. u guys see for urselves, in every game, any player who gets subsituted (usually it starts from 70 minutes or so), the distances covered start from 9km and more.

i really doubt any of our players run so much! no where even close to it. our most hardworking players are teymourian, sadeghi and rezai and i dunno but im guessing these guys run a maximum of 8 or 9 kms in maybe 90 minutes???
thats really below the standard.

this also contributes to poor counter attacks, poorer offense and defensive plays (transition of players from offense to defense and vice versa requires fast and long distance running) and also running in empty spaces and creating passing opportunities for team mates. or the whole team moving up and down during offense and defense.

the worldcup showed us how much difference in fitness and stamina we have from the international standards!

[The-Red]

good thread, well-thought posts.

simply a great tournament,,,certainly better quality games than the wc and my God the speed of the games are sometimes beyond this world...there is simply sooooooooooooo much that a team like Iran can learn from these games that one could write series of books..

games I have simply been amazed by so far (quality-wise, regardless of the result of course)
netherlands-Italy
netherlands-France
Czech Rep.-Turkey

rarely a game is disappointing or low quality, most games are worth watching and I just wish I could watch all of them, some of them twice even.
the most boring team, not surprisingly Greece

[zzgloo]

The fact that most Iranian play football don't move without the ball. It has roots in the street football of gol kochik in the streets where there wasn't much room to move in the first place (hence so much emphasis on dribbling to get through tight spaces).
a soccer player if he is a superstar during the whole game has about 2 minutes the ball at his foot.

Ali jaan............very interesting view I must say..................
Other factors for Iranian players not moveing well, again could be because of lack of profesionality and playing intelegence.....

In Europe, they play the game as if thier mother's life depends on it....
Fast reactions.
Fast passes.
helping fellow players with provideing passing oppurtunities by moveing to better spots.
takeing charge,and not give passes to players with worse possitions.
...................
MOST often our players have to slow down to recieve a pass.or even go back toward the pass.....most often passes have very little immaginations, with no suffistications, no trojectories,no deceptions,and very predictable.,no element of surprize,but more than anything...very slow !