Iran-S.Korea:The game analysis

[Hajagha]

Over all, we had a good game, not perfect though. No surprises, no major mistakes. Our left side is active, thanks to Khalatbari who was one of our best today and maybe one of our best left mid in years. Kazemi showed he has nothing shorter than mighty Nekonam, which is very good news for us. Kaebi is still fighter and can run up and down in the whole game. Rahmati is our confidence in the net.

We showed that we are organized, we have plan for counters, we have also plan for the opponent counters, we know how to run the ball in the flanks, we understand the coverage in offence and defence.

However, we showed that our coach is still rookie, his first change could have been different to keep the ball possession rather than stronger in the 50/50 balls (the difference between Shojaei and Bagheri). We also relied too much on the long balls for Bagheri and Vahid to get the rebounds for our technical mid’s. This was not the right idea after we were ahead, we needed a runner to keep the Korean defence on their heels and push them back. I think we could have changed Vahid with Borhani when we were ahead.

Hope he learns from his mistake.

Still, we are pretty alive and running.


Cheers,

[Hadi]

let me organize my thoughts before writing

[Doctor DOOM]

Part 1-
What can anyone say except repeating what was said BEFORE the game?

The line up was quite predictable as well as the mistakes and deficiencies.
Bagheri played the whole 90 minutes and much like daei’s last year at TM, his presence didn’t make one jot of difference in the game and we well could have played with 10 men and at least get the same result ( or even better )!!
Does that surprise me? NO.
We knew this for weeks, months now.
We’re just waiting to see just when our coach will have the guts and spine to admit to his mistake and removes bagheri from the starting line ups, at least.

I wish daei had HALF the guts of the Korean coach, who rightfully saw his #9 wasn’t doing well and subbed him within half an hour of the game, in the first half. If Daei had half his guts, he’d have subbed karim out by halftime and played Nouri, who’s a playmaker who would impact the deimi, ali asghari style of TM’s game and maybe create something for the team up front.

But, NO SUCH LUCK for us!
Daei’s “rafigh-baazi” and foolish stubbornness is slowly costing TM !
Agha jan, basse digeh. Roo dar bayesti ke nadarim. Bazikon nemitooneh, bezaresh kenar. Yeki digeh ro biyar too. Taarof ke nadarim

This is not YOUR or your father’s team that you do any crap and expect not to be questioned. This team belongs to ALL OF IRAN. Where’s the accountability here?

------------------

Much like other vatani coaches, daei lost his nerves & guts in such situations, and reverted to 4-2-3-1 ! Hah …. Big surprise there!

Keeping an aging VH as the sole forward has already been tried , even when he was IN FORM and in top mental condition. Today, after his bench warming days and his personal tragedy? It was a no-brainer. As predicted, again.

VH is fast losing pace and energy. I remember a few years back he’d have ended up receiving many of those balls he never reached today. We better face it and have the guts to do something about it.
He was snuffed out like a little candle by the Korean defenders and there was daei who didn’t do a thing until late, late ( minute 88, after conceding ) in the game when he brought a second forward!!
Wow! Talk about inheriting “wimpy behavior” from Branko!
More on those subs later.

-------------------

Kazemi played well today and I personally feel, that was a penalty on him.
His foot was tripped by the Korean defender and more often than not, refs would call it!


Other players who played well are nekounam, Rahmati, Ashjari, khalatbari and Hosseini (only in his defending. not his lobs ).
But those are all individual works done by them. as a TEAM, we sucked !

[Doctor DOOM]

Part 2-

The team played its usual deimi, ali asghari football with repeated lobs ( read “bezan ziresh” tactics) from the defense, in the hope that somehow, somewhere, someone would do something that may end up in our favor!!
Mashalah be in coaching staff. Che shahkari kardan !!
When ppl were talking about the coaching staff being light weight, they were not talking about “body fat” and “girth of one’s belly”


The main defect in Daei’s teams have been lack of a playmaker.
Ok, you’ve got pedar k0shtegi with mobaali and don’t want to call him? Fine.
You have personal sh*t going on with karimi and push him away ? fine.
You have problem with jabbari’s fitness ? fine.
BUT, Agha jan, you still have both Shojaei and Nouri in ur team.
Why the hell don’t you play them as the playmaker?
Wait . Don’t answer. No need to answer. It’s all about rafigh baazi !!!!

This team with one replacement of bagheri with either Nouri or Shojaei would have done far better and maybe won the game for us at home.

The height of daei’s confusion and errors was when his first subbing came by removing Shojaei and retaining bagheri !
Why couldn’t he remove the ineffectual bagheri, bring Shojaei to his post and then give your favorite player, G-nejad the right flank?
Too much taxing of brain power? Causes a head ache, poor baby?


This sub would have maintained our slight superiority on the game after scoring our goal and maintained the pressure on the Koreans ( I’d even say it would have increased the pressure with a proper PASSER in place of bagheri ).
But daei lost his guts and brought in a defender and kept bagheri who wasn’t doing jack. That SURRENDERED the midfield to the Koreans and their goal was inevitable after this f**k up.

----------------------

Subbing:
Apart from the first f**ked up subbing that came late with wrong switches, why would a coach, whose team is ahead , at home, wait till minutes 86 and 88 to make his last 2 subs?

Aghaye daei, substitution has MORE uses than mere “eating up time” for you to do ur second subbing at min 86! There is a tactical aspect to it too.

After your first sub ( which was a total screw up to begin with ), your team is under pressure and you have surrendered the midfield to opponents. Why don’t you make ur second sub here?
No. No such luck !
Then, you wait till they score on us and ONLY THEN it strikes you that you still have TWO more subs allowed?
Horrible decision making!
For such horrible decision making exactly how many staff members we have on the bench? Even ONE is one too many. A piece of wood could make crappy decisions too. Why keep all these ppl on the bench ?

We shd have KNOWN ( if we had proper analysts in our staff) that much like the Saudi game, the Koreans will apply much pressure on us NEAR. THE. END. OF. THE. GAME. That’s when they scored 2 goals against the Saudis, IN Saudi.

Now, how difficult is it to put 2 and 2 together and be READY for such eventualities? Our subbing proved the team is NOT being led well AT ALL !



and AKBARPOOR as the sub? BEFORE Borhani ?
Really ?
are you for real?
mind boggling !!!
how many goals has akbarpoor scored compared to borhani ?
a clear example of brain freeze on the bench that is quite light on grey matter anyway !
----------------------

We shd learn from the Koreans. They played well, to a plan and stuck to it even when they fell behind.
Mind you, this korea wasn’t such a skillful or highly technical side. But they played to their game plan of running down the clock till the last quarter of the halves where they’d attack and spend their force to put pressure on opponents.

They also used EVERY INCH OF THE PITCH to their advantage … unlike us!
Which brings me to yet another predicted issue: our crossing … or lack thereof.
How many crosses did we have for a forward who’s known for his HEADING ability ?
Heh. Don’t bother to count. It’s not even half as enough.

Shooting was another issue that required attention and was never done.
In a team that has PLENTY of shooters like nekounam, kazemi, VH, bagheri, … how many long range shots we had?
Pathetic !

----------------------

And finally, let me end with another praise to our great gol keeper, Rahmati, who again, saved us on a couple of occasions.
He did a very good job, even on the goal, where he did HIS part and his defenders let him down. Some may say he could have "punched" the ball away, which wouldnt have been a bad option either. But that's only said in hindsight.
Mashalah. Zendeh bashi.

And the score could have been far more tragic for us! Korean strikers lost some 3-4 100% opportunities to score, on headers or their runs that were never marked or defended! ( btw, I dont remember having ANY 100% chance for TM today !! )

Today was a bad result for us, considering it was a home game and now, we’re 2 points behind the leaders and on 3rd place.
But we shd get down on our knees and praise the lord for making the Korean strikers’ shots and headers off target as well. This could have easily ended 4-1 for Korea !!!


Is this the end of the road?
No.
But given the tight schedule near the end and TWO away trips to the two teams ABOVE us, makes the road extremely difficult !

[faraz]

my mother always said 'give praise where praise is due'. i do not disagree with a SINGLE word of dd's posts.

thanks DD for putting it all into words.

Waiting on the post-match conference comments now...

[Doctor DOOM]

and on a lighter side, WHAT. THE. HELL. WAS. WITH. THAT. JERSEY????
LOL

It was H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E. !!!

I think the guy who ... ahem ( for lack of a better word ) "designed" it, was riding on a roller coaster with someone going on hitting his elbow !!
Pathetic design in lines ... in a very funny way!

=============

Farza jan, your mother is a great & wise human being.

[maij]

Over all, we had a good game, not perfect though. No surprises, no major mistakes. Our left side is active, thanks to Khalatbari who was one of our best today and maybe one of our best left mid in years. Kazemi showed he has nothing shorter than mighty Nekonam, which is very good news for us. Kaebi is still fighter and can run up and down in the whole game. Rahmati is our confidence in the net.

We showed that we are organized, we have plan for counters, we have also plan for the opponent counters, we know how to run the ball in the flanks, we understand the coverage in offence and defence.

However, we showed that our coach is still rookie, his first change could have been different to keep the ball possession rather than stronger in the 50/50 balls (the difference between Shojaei and Bagheri).

Hope he learns from his mistake.

Still, we are pretty alive and running.


Cheers,

Very valid point Reza Jan and I quite agree with you. In fact Hashemian wasn't doing badly in shielding the ball and distributing it , but runners such as Borhani or Akbarpour could have been a better option.


I am becoming very nervous with Hossein Kaebi....and I am really dumbfounded by Daei's lack of disciplinary guidance to this young man...he is a liability in any game , even friendlies. While the coaching staff keeps quiet ( at least in public) , I am afraid Kaebi Shoorish dar miaad ..one of these days....and we will be playing with one man short in a crucial stage.


The goal conceeded was a classic Iranian Defence Dozing Syndrome ..

[faraz]

Still, we are pretty alive and running.
Cheers,

I apologize for the pessimism in advance, but we are in no shape or form 'alive' or 'running'. We are officially OUT, as it stands, of an automatic qualification spot.

We still have to play, in order:

-Saudi in Tehran (for them, it's a do or die situation...will NOT be easy)
-NK in NK (top of the group, comfortable win today, NO pushovers)
-UAE in Tehran (could be our only 'easy' win, and how 'easy' - well based on the last match we had against the whipping boys of the group, not very..)
-SK in SK (...no need to even comment on this one)

These four games overall build a TOUGHER path than our previous four games. We have a MIGHTY task. Hopefully we will have automatically qualified before SK, but I'm not sure what the chances of that are either.

It's time to worry.

[Doctor DOOM]

You see, daei's excuse for not calling in kia or madanchi or zandi was becoz he didnt want to make too many changes.
fair enough reason ... if your original & regular team played good football. good team work, adequate cohesion. fine.

But when your regular team doesnt play well, what is at risk of being changed or lost in this ?
NOTHING.

All we'd have is greater experience and better crossing from both left & right sides. and perhaps the chance to score more on free kicks.

now, THAT, I'm ready to change the team for anyday. especially a team that as it is doesnt play as a team anyway.

[yashar_fasihnia]

i dont think the game was as big as a disaster as our frustrations show.
i think the problems were:

1)too many aimless crosses from defense to hashemian who couldnt always win the aerial battles. hence loss of ball possession many times and even if we got possession, we were eliminating kazemi, nekounam, ashjari and kaebi from our play through straight balls and in effect, it was only 2 -3 iranians surrounded by minimum 5 koreans.

2)playing karim bagheri for 90 minutes! until the 75th minute or so, our midfield was still doing alrite and the koreans really didnt dictate the game over us (except the last 10 minutes of first half) but after that, we were exhausted.
bagheri, hashemian and shojaei were not running at all and the koreans easily pressurized us and eventually scored.
i think that time itself, daei should have introduced someone like akbarpour who runs endlessly and could press the koreans from defense itself and prevent the korean team from moving somuch close to our goal.

although i think bagheri should have been subbed out before shojaei, i still think shojaei should have been subbed out too. he was exhasuted too and besides, he wasnt having his best of days either and making lots of wrong passes. him playing 90 minutes with osasuna a few days back and then straight away flying down to iran and playing again another 90 minutes could be a big factor for his below par performance today.

3)and i wouldnt say we were lucky we didnt lose. while rahmati saved a few and the korean strikers missed a few, we on our part missed a few chances as well, namely bagheri's poor shots today, nekounam's header which went over the bar, khalatbari's solo run in that counter attack and shot which went to corner and most important of all, the referee who didnt give us the penalty on kazemi and also the foul which he awarded to the koreans was very soft and could be ignored. it was definitely softer than the tackle the koreans did on kazemi! i cant understand how a soft bagheri touch could result in a direct freekick but a clear harder tackling on kazemi was not called a penalty!

overall, i think 1-1 was a fair result. both teams missed some good chances and both teams created majority of their danger through set pieces.

4)we should have taken more shots on goal. bagheri took a few but they were nowhere close to the goal.

5)the absence of a playmaker in the middle was once again felt in the team..CLEARLY!

[Doctor DOOM]

^ plz dont count those mindless LOBS and "bezan ziresh" kicks from defense as "crosses". coz ppl may be misled to think we did have some "crosses" !!! heh !
we hardly had ANY crossing.


and having 2 players surrounded by MANY opponents is the natural outcome of using aging players up front in a stupid 4-2-3-1 formation.
plz refer to other posts on what shd these player be like ... which is nothing like what bagheri or VH are like !


our midfield did NOT do alright.
apart from non-existence of any playmaking and thru' passing or ... , the korean game plan was apparent: put pressure near the end of each half.
so if you think we werent under much pressure up to min 75 ( which is wrong, as the last 10-12 minutes of the first half is testament to it ), it has nothing to do with our mids doing allright and everything to do with the korean's plan.
No wonder they suddenly and very EASILY turned things around and won the midfield battle.


none of OUR chances were 100% ones. neku's header was just a regular header off any corner with lots of bodies in between... which btw, flew over the goal & wasnt even ON TARGET. khalatbari's run was good, but he had defender on him and it was a tight angle, ... .
but korea's #9 had a FREE ( yes free ) header which HE misdirected, near the beginning of the game. apart from a couple of other shots that were saved by rahmati's finger tips. and another tap in off a cross from kaabi's side which the korean had ONLY the keeper to beat, but miskicked the ball ( thankfully ).

[faraz]

i dont think the game was as big as a disaster as our frustrations show.

Yashar jan,
We couldn't even hold a lead in front of our home fans for 20 minutes! It would have just been 30 seconds had the Korean player headed the ball in from 2 millimeters out right after our goal.
That is the disaster my friend. These three points would have been the sweetest thing since sugar. After playing a mediocre-bad game, we still somehow saw ourselves get the lead through neko's brilliance and our coaches and managers failed to come up with whatever it is they're paid to come up with to hold a precious 1-0 lead.
I think we have every right to be frustrated with this result.

[faraz]

btw, Daei's latest, from the-afc.com

Ali Daei admitted he was pleased with the efforts from his players, in particular that of striker Vahid Hashemian, whose mother died last week.
“He worked very hard and I’m very happy with him,” said Daei who used the veteran Bochum forward as a lone striker.
“We played with one upfront because we needed someone who would fight their defenders in the air and he did that.
“Everyone gave their all. We defended well, apart from when they scored.”
---------------------
Huh's comments

Korea Republic coach Huh Jung-moo admitted he was disappointed to be leaving Iran with just a point after the two sides played out a 1-1 draw in their FIFA World Cup Asian qualifier on Wednesday.
“We gave everything to win and we’re unhappy that we didn’t. It was a good game and we had a lot of chances but we only used one of them, said the 54-year-old, referring to the equaliser, scored by captain and Manchester United winger Park Ji-Sung with eight minutes left.
-----------------------
Is it just me, or is there a stark contrast here ?!

[yashar_fasihnia]

Yashar jan,
We couldn't even hold a lead in front of our home fans for 20 minutes! It would have just been 30 seconds had the Korean player headed the ball in from 2 millimeters out right after our goal.
That is the disaster my friend. These three points would have been the sweetest thing since sugar. After playing a mediocre-bad game, we still somehow saw ourselves get the lead through neko's brilliance and our coaches and managers failed to come up with whatever it is they're paid to come up with to hold a precious 1-0 lead.
I think we have every right to be frustrated with this result.

result is definitely frustrating... but i dont think we played a bad game. we might have had bad/ wrongly timed substitutions but i dont think we played bad...

however, i do insist that our CBs bekesh ziresh was frustrating and should be stopped...

[yashar_fasihnia]

and having 2 players surrounded by MANY opponents is the natural outcome of using aging players up front in a stupid 4-2-3-1 formation.
plz refer to other posts on what shd these player be like ... which is nothing like what bagheri or VH are like !

i think even hashemian was alright for this formation, only bagheri didnt do well.
however, both of them should have been subbed out by the 65th minute or so in my opinion.

our midfield did NOT do alright.
apart from non-existence of any playmaking and thru' passing or ... , the korean game plan was apparent: put pressure near the end of each half.
so if you think we werent under much pressure up to min 75 ( which is wrong, as the last 10-12 minutes of the first half is testament to it ), it has nothing to do with our mids doing allright and everything to do with the korean's plan.
No wonder they suddenly and very EASILY turned things around and won the midfield battle.

no, our midfield did alright. we controlled them well for almost the entire game except for the last 10 minutes of first half and last 15 minutes of second half. i think the main reason was fatigue of our older players like bagheri and hashemian and the fact that shojaei wasnt helping much either. and thats when they could turn things around and i think daei should have subbed out bagheri and hashemian earlier and brought in players like akbarpour and/or borhani who could run a lot for the last 20 minutes and press them from their defense line itself.

the absence of playmaking was the main problem in midfield, but should partly be blamed on the bekesh ziresh attitude of aghili and hosseini. we could have done more team work and build up of attacks through our 2 fullbacks on 2 sides or our defensive midfielders and try some playmaking in the middle that way.
ofcourse, having a playmaker in the middle would have helped more, but even then, when aghili and hosseini just keep kicking under the ball, the presence of a playmaker in the middle wont have such a huge impact.

none of OUR chances were 100% ones. neku's header was just a regular header off any corner with lots of bodies in between... which btw, flew over the goal & wasnt even ON TARGET. khalatbari's run was good, but he had defender on him and it was a tight angle, ... .
but korea's #9 had a FREE ( yes free ) header which HE misdirected, near the beginning of the game. apart from a couple of other shots that were saved by rahmati's finger tips. and another tap in off a cross from kaabi's side which the korean had ONLY the keeper to beat, but miskicked the ball ( thankfully ).

if u wanna count the 100% chances, then the only 100% chance the koreans had was the header which hit the bar to which we had a penalty on our side which wasnt called either. a couple of long range shots from 25 30 meters, arent really 100% chances...
otherwise, we can also count masoud shojaei's chip which went over the bar, or nekounam's header which the GK misjudged and hence their goal was empty but nekounam headed high.

the 1-1 result was fair and i think it was a more or less even game. wats frustrating is that it was played in azadi and hence, this 1-1 draw benefitted the koreans and not us.