Iran - Bahrain discussion

[Doctor DOOM]

I missed the game so I’m at shirfarhad’s mercy to provide me the game for download. I just got the first half, so I’ll try to go over it as I watch.

First half (or drudgery and boredom)

It was a dismal display of football or rather magnificent show of “sar dar gom” & “deimi” football against a very weak, young Bahrain (B side, perhaps?)

The usual hoofing the ball up field was just too painful to even watch. We didn’t have any plans to penetrate a team that sits deep and presses from halfway line. And ghotbi has shown after a year, he still hasn’t had any ideas how to get around such a situation! All they relied on was crosses coming from Mobaali and Haidari to create some danger and opportunity. Beyond this, the team didn’t have any plans and proved quite boring and weak.

We still have too many passes between the two central defenders, just back-n-forth-ing the ball, hich gets us absolutely nothing and very very few useful, positive (forward looking) passes in mid-1/3rd or further up. And I still blame it on the formation of 4-2-3-1, where the poor lone forward, as usual, is left like a little orphan boy whom no one likes!!!
I don’t know when and where are we going to see two forwards. Shd we wait for maldives’ youth reserves to finally see two strikers??? Aah!

GK choice:
I’m also not too excited about seeing Rahmati in the goal. giving chance to 2nd or 3rd choice keepers would have paid off more in context of asia cup. (not that I support using mirza as 2nd choice coz he’s nowhere near Gordan).

Left Back:
I don’t know how many times poor Hajsafi is pushed into this post where he is least comfortable with and even if he doesn’t say it, his game confirms it! He may be useful going forward as a marauding winger, but as a defender he is just not skilled enough to form an adequate resistance to the opponent wingers. We get away with this since most of our opponents are weaker than us so this issue doesn’t get exposed enough. But I doubt the more decent and stronger teams would fail to exploit this.
Time to give the position back to Ashjari, who has proven his abilities there.


Only a kid would get excited about this half (probably seeing the 2 goals). Our teamwork and non-existent tactics, a great source of worry.

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Second half:

- In second half there was a little less lobbing and hoofing and a bit more passing of the ball into midfield and up front. I hope we work on this more and get rid of those hoofing.

- Mobaali deserved to score that goal, instead of the ball that hit the post, for his good performance. Loved his diagonal balls, as usual.

- Oladi showed highly energetic and justified his inclusion.

- Pushing Maydavoudi down on the right side is simply a big mistake. Not that he cant perform there, but that we don’t get the best out of him down the flanks. I think he shd have been added as the second striker.

- Md. Nouri has become a different player from his sepahan days. And it’s for the good. In sepahan he was more a conductor and playmaker in the mold of navidkia, mobaali, jabbari, as an orchestrator of the team’s moves. But in the past 1-2 years he’s become more like those attacking midfielders who push forward and score goals. So less conduction and more incision.
However, he shd have kept his head and simply tapped in the goal, rather than like a novice rookie too eager to impress so he kicks it as hard as he can!
(I wouldn’t mind if he had more frequent visits to the barber either and got rid of that ridiculous, crappy afro )


- We had a lot of crosses from left and right. But having a single forward pretty much rendered them useless as oladi was lost between 2-3 defenders. If you notice, oladi’s goal came off a quick turn-over and an individual sprint. So the coaches shd recognize 10’s of crosses in the run of play but hardly any result! Which means we’d do far better if we had TWO forwards which doubles the chances of one of OUR lads receiving the crosses


- Iranian players/forwards shd learn to take shots first time and as we say “sar-e zarb”. Instead of dilly-dallying and “laas bazi” with the ball. (not a particular observation for this game, but as a general comment seen in ALL Iranian football, TM and club games)

[Martin-Reza]

My main conclusion is the confirmation that Mobali needs dead balls to be classy, out of play his contribution is zero in best case and negative in worst, as he is delaying the build-up much too often. Mohammad Nouri on the other hand not only developed into a dangerous goalscoring midfielder like Dr. Doom correctly pointed out, also his one-touch through balls are amazing. It is a mystery to me why he never gets a chance to start.

[Doctor DOOM]

on Iman, I have noticed he does have quite a few passes that go either square (lateral) or to players behind him. and this is a departure from what he is known for and used to be.

I'm not saying this is normal or defending it, coz I think he needs to be more adventurous. (perhaps a direct result of his bumpy start and return to iranian football after many years).

but could it be becoz with a formation like 4-2-3-1, he doesnt have many players in front of him to pass to? the lone striker is usually crowded by the markers. and in this position that he's placed in, he has two players SQUARE to him and the rest of the team BEHIND him?
so where does he pass to but square or behind?
in 4-2-3-1 here, he's used just behind the lone striker, in the "3". I'd say if he's placed a bit deeper (in the "2") it allows him to create and direct/orchestrate the play, the direction of thrust, .. etc etc.



besides, he very rarely makes a turn-over compared to the rest of the players. so we still keep possession, instead of simply passing it up but ending up with the opponent.

he also makes up with his vision of the whole pitch where he sees runners on either flank. and his perfect diagonal balls that feeds these runners as well as flank changes that takes opponents off guard. this is usually when he plays a bit deeper and not right behind the striker.

but I agree, he needs to get more daring and adventurous with his passing. perhaps once he truly settles in in ss and iranian football.

[Hajagha]

The difference between the current team and previous teams is their stamina. Qotbi seems to like players with positive ratio of work in the field. Players like Ando, Noori, Rezaei, Gholami, ... are the evidence of my claim. I don't remember any Iranian team who is this rush to get the ball back from the opponent. of course, such a team lacks creativity since the players selections are based on physical attitude.

I like the combo of Noori-Ando-Neko in front of Aghili-Hosseini. I can’t see any Asian teams being able to pass this combo. It seems this is the core of Qotbi's team. The other positions are debatable.

Cheers,

[Babak agha]

Moblai is also one of the few, if not the only, player in TM that keeps (contra-)moving after he passes. All other Iranians stop and watch the game after they pass or just walk around (unless they're doing a 1-2, which is in their self interest to keep running).

Furthermore, he keeps hosteling, pressuring and tackling the opponent all the time.

And about his passing and the amount of the time he needs before he passes, unlike MR insultingly calls it him being slow in the head, the reason for that also can be the fact that when you play with just one person in front of you, like DD pointed out, 9 out of 10 passes would be to the players behind, or next to you.

And since most Iranian players don't move as long as they don't have the ball, they are worse at positioning themselves to receive a through pass, and suck at creating space for other players, it will take a playmaker a lot of time before he passes. Unless you are Karimi which means you dribble first for a couple moments until one of your teammates gets the idea that he might start moving, and then you can pass the ball to him. But since Mobali is not really a dribbler he needs to hold on to the ball as long as someone would make himself available, and that makes Mobali look slow to people who don't know much about football. If you'd know half as much as you thought you knew about football, then you would know that passing the ball to a player is the easiest thing in foot ball, you don't even need (tactical)vision unless you want to give a through pass or determine the speed of the game.

The difficult part of the football is how and where on the pitch you'll have to walk/run when someone else has the ball. Like Cruijff always said, you can play with your hands in your pocket, with no need of running, if you know where you have to be before the ball is there. So the slow passing pf Mobali is not all his fault. Why do you think that Hosseini and Aghili keep passing the ball between themselves 5 or 6 times and then just lob it to the opponent's keeper? because nobody in front of them knows where they have to be and how they have to move when a CB has the ball.

And when you compare Nouri to Mobali in that game. which you shouldn't do, the fact that Nouri was able to pass faster and create more danger was that:
1. Iran was playing with more offensive players at that moment
2. Bahrain was giving a lot of space away
3. The speed of the game was a lot higher than when Mobali was in the game, as Bahrain started to attack and Iran could counter at will

I'm not saying that Mobali is the best Iranian midfielder, he is even far from the form he had before he went to UAE, but when you criticize his slow play, it says more about your lack of knowledge of football than him "being slow in the head".

But then again we know that MR is big fan of Mobali and his comments about him are not really objective

But then again (yeah a second but then again) MR didn't know what really a winger was and the difference between a RM, RW and a RWB till just a couple years ago someone posted a wikipedia picture of football positions to point it out to him. And this is why you should play FIFA on PS3 instead of PES on Xbox MR jan :P

All in all it was a bad game with a good result. And Ghotbi should, rightly so, be criticized, as van Marwijk is being criticized in Holland, for playing with two DM and one "striker" even against weaker teams.

[Doctor DOOM]

And since most Iranian players don't move as long as they don't have the ball, they are worse at positioning themselves to receive a through pass, and suck at creating space for other players, it will take a playmaker a lot of time before he passes. Unless you are Karimi which means you dribble first for a couple moments until one of your teammates gets the idea that he might start moving, and then you can pass the ball to him. But since Mobali is not really a dribbler he needs to hold on to the ball as long as someone would make himself available, and that makes Mobali look slow to people who don't know much about football. If you'd know half as much as you thought you knew about football, then you would know that passing the ball to a player is the easiest thing in foot ball, you don't even need (tactical)vision unless you want to give a through pass or determine the speed of the game.

The difficult part of the football is how and where on the pitch you'll have to walk/run when someone else has the ball. Like Cruijff always said, you can play with your hands in your pocket, with no need of running, if you know where you have to be before the ball is there. So the slow passing pf Mobali is not all his fault. Why do you think that Hosseini and Aghili keep passing the ball between themselves 5 or 6 times and then just lob it to the opponent's keeper? because nobody in front of them knows where they have to be and how they have to move when a CB has the ball.

good points on creating space, making oneself available for the player with the ball.

I really think TM shd watch barcelona, if not for the utter enjoyment of how football shd be played, but for the way they CREATE SPACE or RUN INTO SPACES to make themselves available for the pass.

if you notice, they sometimes follow a pattern, which can be used in teaching our players to follow the same patterns too.


the comparison with barca is not brought expecting our players to play like them (although those guys are not aliens - except xavi, of course. they're humans like us). but for f**ks sake both set of players can RUN.

if we taught how barca creates space and what zones or holes are available when the ball-player is in a particular zone, then with more practice, it becomes a part of our style.
this is not difficult at all.
watch at least 4 barca games and you'd notice a repeated pattern of plays from them.
for example, when pique has the ball, we dont see a large variety of passes from him (yes, one of them is a diagonal lob usually to maxwell. but that's only one of them). it's limited and some of them are repeated very frequently.
same with maxwel's passes and moves. same with busquets and ... etc.

you'd notice a lot of moves are seen over and over in the course of a game. and even repeated more if you watch 4-5 games.


(Xavi, however is a magician and I believe, an alien from alpha-centauri. so no use trying to emulating him)


RUNNING is not beyond our team. at least they can get that right.

[zzgloo]

Very interesting comments.....I particularly liked Hajagha's Observation.....
Aside his comments...this TM seems to be much faster than what Ali Daei had to offer.....and this TM seems to have closed the gap among the players as well......the ball transfer is faster, the players are closer, and The thurst,to get the ball back is higher......

No body knew which Bahraini team was going to play, as TM had same info we all had.....and considering, the importance of this game ( Losing to Bahrain,is the worst lost in the world,to the eyes of Iranian fans )..he had to start with causion.....and gradualy build...which was what Ghotbi and TM did.

[Martin-Reza]

@ Babak, I've barely ever read such a long excuse . Interestingly most other players manage to play the ball forward quickly (see Mohammad Nouri after he came on), but strangely as soon as Mobali gets in posession all passing options disappear and he unfortunately has to delay the game for a few seconds - poor guy, the universe seems to be against him.

And there is no reason to come up with lies about me, we ha a discussion about the English terminology of some tactical positions as there are some differences to the German terminology which can't be translated to English 1:1 (such as the circumstance that there is no different terminology for fullback and wingback in German), now you don't have to try hard to denounce my tactical knowledge because of that.

[Babak agha]

@ Babak, I've barely ever read such a long excuse . Interestingly most other players manage to play the ball forward quickly (see Mohammad Nouri after he came on), but strangely as soon as Mobali gets in posession all passing options disappear and he unfortunately has to delay the game for a few seconds - poor guy, the universe seems to be against him.

And there is no reason to come up with lies about me, we ha a discussion about the English terminology of some tactical positions as there are some differences to the German terminology which can't be translated to English 1:1 (such as the circumstance that there is no different terminology for fullback and wingback in German), now you don't have to try hard to denounce my tactical knowledge because of that.

First of all I gave you an explanation as why Nouri was able to do that.

Second, I didn't say Mobali was better than Nouri. He is how ever not as bad and slow in the head as you say he is. He is still way better than most regular midfield players Ghotbi starts, if he is used in a right way.

Third, when I read those old discussions I thought that it was the first time you heard the difference between RM & RW and RB & RWB. I still was half right as you didn't know the English terminology

Fourth, start playing FIFA 11 om PS3 and use English as the system language

[Martin-Reza]

lol, you should really switch to PES man, but I am already planning to switch to PS for the next generation of consoles.

About Mobali, maybe I am too harsh on him. My stance also is often influenced by people hyping certain players. Eg. Khosro Heydari is a good player and I have no problems with him, but when he is announced as the new Mahdavikia by some, I feel obligated to point his negative habits more aggressively. Same with Mobali. Now with some midfield options unavailable, I can live with him being in the squad or playing, but as some still consider him the midfield talent of the century who was only prevented from a great European and TM career by the mean Ali Daei, I always feel tempted to point his shortcomings out.

Also this game for me was a classic Mobali game, where his strengths and weaknesses were very well visible. And as someone valuing one-touch football a lot, I simply will never become a fan of Mobali, no matter how good he is in other departments.

[toofan]

from what ive seen ansarifard is our 3rd or 4th striker now.

ghotbi is going for a lone goldor and heavy striker (gholami) and have 2 wingers/
supporting strikers on each side. eg khalatbari, shojae rezayi.

if gholami is not fit then oladi.then probably ansarifard or milad.

[Babak agha]

lol, you should really switch to PES man, but I am already planning to switch to PS for the next generation of consoles.

OFFTOPIC: It really amazes me hearing people say PES is the better game... I really can't get it. Specially after the fact that even the Konami guys admitted that FIFA 10 is the better game........
Still there are so many people who believe that PES is the better game.