Iran vs North Korea

[St_Mark]

Last game against North Korea is an opportunity for Ghotbi to turn his bad fortune around and end embarrassing performances and defeats. He needs to win or display hopeful performances otherwise furthermore will be discredited even to his players.
Like what he said publicly for last game he will use his best 11 from last two games.
Once again Ghotbi will go for Sepahan Defense line minus Ka'bi ( There was a report of slight injury for Ka'bi and an argument between Ka'bi and Rahmati before and after first game)
This game may become physical since North Korea want championship and financial reward. Hopefully TM will win without further damage.

Best wish

likely formation ( with variation in MF)

Rahmati
Nosrati---- Hosseini---- Aghili---- Hajsafi
Andranik ---- P Nouri
Khalatbari---- Milad Z ---- Madanchi
Karim A

[persianallstars]

that's the best possible line-up... only worried about nosrati's place in starting 11.

[maij]

It would be quite a feat if the boyz could score a goal against this team. North Korea has the best deference line in Asia , they are solid , disciplined , tough tackling , systematic and their players are built like bricks.

Mark my word...every fifty fifty ball and most of the challenges will be won by the North Koreans...our boys tend to fall like a house of card on every challenge and the slightest of touches. Khalatbary is the master , bless him !

It is best to keep one's expectation quite low. I expect a low margin defeat for Team Melli and anything better than that is a bonus. After all , there is nothing that I have seen so far from Ghotbi and his team , to suggest something remarkable.

Go Team Melli......

[yashar_fasihnia]

i would like to see mohammad nouri somewhere there..

[Martin-Reza]

I'd also like to see M. Nouri or Zandi in the lineup.

I also doubt Nosrati would get the nod as rightback instead of K. Heydari when Kaebi is unavailable. Sad that the latter doesn't get a chance to make up for his mistake.

[Paradigm]

Martin jaan, Kaabi has done the same exact mistake (chesting the ball for the incoming opponent's striker) recently in the IPL. He is not the same player we used to know under Branko. I honestly would not even give him a TM call up in the future unless he played in the right midfield. His very small stature is not making him suitable as a defender or RB.

[Hajagha]

It's quite refreshing to know, we kept one game in hnad before to become last.

N.Korea already won the tournoment.

[persianallstars]

I have a bad feeling Ghotbi will be sacked if they will be defeated by NK....

[Doctor DOOM]

FIRST HALF OBSERVATIONS:


When aghili or hosseini have the ball, watch what noori and ando do.
NOTHING!!
They don’t move about to free themselves. And on many occasions I see both noori & ando stick to a Korean or walk right BEHIND him!!! As if they do NOT want to be seen or receive the ball!!

No wonder our CB’s are forced to lob the ball! Coz our central mids are fu*king retards who don’t know the basics of football!!


Ok. Lets say out players are dumb and inferior in intellect. But who’s job is it to drill this into their heads? What is the point & purpose of “match reviews” by the coaching staff? To enjoy the spectator-shots and ogle at girls?
And this is not only directed at ghotbi. This happened under Daei also !

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The few times we somehow, by luck, get the ball to the opponents’ half, after a couple of useless passes, again we PASS BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the struggle starts all over!

I think they shd make long back-passes illegal. In one instance we had the ball at the Korean flag and they kept passing back  back  back  back  back to the freaking goal keeper!!!!
Bloody morons! Pathetic midfield!

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Is Bora Milutinovic going to replace ghotbi?
This is the second day he’s appeared where TM has either practiced or played.

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Again moronic placement of players!
Khalatbari is pushed to the side, who plays best in the center. And zeneiedpour is played in the middle, who plays best on the left!! And who has NO IMAGINATION or CREATIVITY whatsoever (which is NEEDED for this post)!! (he is industrious and fits well on the flanks. NOT IN THE MIDDLE)

And still there are ppl who defend this idiot!

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I think heydari pretty much proved he is far more capable in aerial battles and heading and defending high balls in our 18 than kaabi.

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for the goal, I have only one thing to say:
DOGGED PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF

Dame madanchi garm for persisting and not giving up on the ball. and actually slotting it in between 5 korean players.

90% of players dont bother chasing these balls.
(p.s.; martin must have really enjoyed this madanchi goal )

[Adesor Vafaseya]

I don't think so, Bora Milutinovic is a good old friend of Ghotbi. he was also as far as I know a Guest coach in Ghotbi's football academy in L.A.
I guess he is just there to watch his old buddys team play and practice....

just my guess

[Doctor DOOM]

SECOND HALF:

same old, same old!
only a couple of issues:

1- khalatbari ought to be more in control of his temper. this is becoming a serial temper tantrum. and in real matches this may cause probelm for him and TM.

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2- despite a poor first half by zeneiedpoor, he remianed on the pitch while we have players far better suited for this post on the bench: Md. Nouri
and this shows ghotbi's inability to know his own players' capabilities and his lack of insight.

zeneiedpour is a very good player. but not for the middle of the pitch. and CERTAINLY not as any team's playmaker or creative midfield.
he has absolutely not one bone of creativity in his body. he is like madanchi. quick, industrious and skillful when on the flank and when a flank player's tasks are asked of him.

any sane person after the previous game would have understood this and wouldnt have played him here again. but we're talking about someone who's most probably spending almost all his time on justifying his words/acts and talking rubbish in a floral manner. no wonder he has no time or insight to know who's capable of what!

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3- I feel very bad for ansarifard. and our strikers in general.
they get subbed not becoz they were poor. but becoz we PLACE them in a situation for them to fail!!

all alone, in the middle of the cluster of defenders. what do u expect him to do?

as long as we're using a single striker line up, we're gonna see the same scenario get repeated over n over!

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4- I can see why ando's not getting even a minute in EPL.
very poor performance by him. and to see him get the MVP must be an insult to our intelligence. although nobdy played well. so I guess they had to dump that $1000 cheque on some bloody one, so they got the first player who was walking by and shoved the plaque into his hands

[Martin-Reza]

^^ I rather think Bora is supposed to coach DPR at WC...

Anyway, lineup as expected, first half was ok, second half was one of the worst games I've seen recently. DPR embrassingly failed to do sth themselves when they had to, Iran failed to launch real counter attacks. Very poor.

I am now 100% sure DPR will be smashed badly at WC, and I mean really bad, could be a negative record in goals conceded.

I liked the fighting spirit of Teymourian, Nouri and Madanchi. I think that made the difference today.

Ansarifard should have scored the second early in second half, that would have sealed the win and we would have seen a better game. He showed the movement of a real striker getting away from his marker, but he must get the shot on target.

The often bashed defense also did a good job against the nimble strikers, for Iranian standards I mean.

And Khosro Heydari remains second choice behind Kaebi for me. Not that he was particulary bad or shouldn't be in TM, but he is simply much slower in the head than Kaebi. Lol, almost everytime he got the ball you could hear our bench screaming "bedeh, bedeh" .

[Doctor DOOM]

to all those who say "good performance" or "we owned NK" or ... :
you must bear in mind NK is a team singly devoid of any technical ability or skills. a team that basically just runs and runs. and all its tactics are : defend, defend defend and rely on a quick counterattack or two!

that's about ALL that NK is capable of.

so dominating such a team is nothing to write home about.

It's just one of life's rare exceptions and amazements that they qualified for the WC!

[Martin-Reza]

^ I agree, but still we must not underrate the achievement of not conceding a counter and managing to break through such a packed defense.

It's not hard to dominate them, but, at least for our kind, it is hard to get a result against them, but again we managed to do so, while the likes of Saudi, Qatar and Mali all failed.

[Essi]

Even though I have given up my hopes on our TM but I must admit that I could see some improvement today but some side notes.

1-As I saw and heard from the commentator, obviously the coach has told defenders to stop sending the ball from the defense to forwards which they seemed to follow pretty well today. Now, how hard is it to teach midfielders and forwards to not pass the ball back to defense in the middle of a attack? It's so damn frustrating to see that while team are building a offense and all of sudden, some idiot pass the ball back to a defender?? The coach should almost forbid forwards and offensive midfielder to pass the ball back to our own half.

2- Our player's football understanding or IQ are far below international level more or less, particularly those who never been playing outside Iran like Hajsafee, Gholamreza Rezaei, Aghili, Hosseini but also Madanchi who has been playing in UAE few years now.

3- We still don't have a game plan. Those goals we scored until now have been mostly individual efforts without any particular game plan.

4- When will our player learn to stop losing balls? Why so many incorrect passes? Look at Hajsafee today. I decided to count his passes which went to wrong destination but I lost the count since it passed 10. Wth, these guys are playing in international level and that mean you should at least be able to pass the ball to your closest teammate but..

5- It's embarrassing to see how we loose every single duel in the air even despite having tall defenders. I mean how on earth can these short Koreans win every damn battle in the air??

6- It's so obvious that we lack goal scorer and Unfortunately we wont see any natural goal scorer like Ali Daei in years if ever

7- I remember during Branco's time as a coach, we used to play similar tournaments and people were blaming him that these tournaments are crap and winning them don't really matter but now we play such crappy tournament without any good opponents and finished 4th of 4. I'm not saying that teams in those tournament were better but at least we used to win them all and that was the main reason and vision to get used to winning but unfortunately now we are getting used to losing and our whitewash is that we are building a team for the future!! Even a new built team must learn and get used to winning right??

8- Bottom line, we still must rely on few players like Rahmati, Ando (A class above other), Khalatbary and somehow Hosseini.

9- In a perfect world and good days, players like Hajsafee, Meydavoodi, Rezai, Aghili, Feshangchi and many others wouldn't even sit on the bench.