The Search for new coach

[Martin-Reza]

It's indeed amusing how many are comforting themselves by acting as if we had had a coaching problem and therefore were underperforming.

No doubt, none of the few previous coaches was of international class and able to make the team play above the actual strength level while Queiroz surely has the potential to do so (for 4-5 times the money of course).

But everyone in his sane mind knew that the most likely scenario would be that no coach would be able to make up the lost ground in WCQ with a tough schedule to go and that with this AC draw Iran would 99% go out in quarterfinals. And while Ghotbi only lost one competitive game while having a perfect AC group stage (who was the last Iranian coach to achieve that??) and going out in extra time to Korea, now people left and right try to act as if we would have been champions if we had anyone but the one we had.

If I had missed the AC and would read your comments now, I would assume Iran was eliminated in group stage with 0 points, lol.

Iran's AC performance was absolutely reflecting the potential of the current team. We are good enough to beat teams like Iraq, DPR and UAE under normal circumstances, but just not fully on the level of Korea, Japan and Australia! That has nothing to do with coaching, except of the factor, that some coaches like Hiddink are able to achieve sth special with an unspecial team, and Ghotbi surely isn't one of those.

We neither had a coaching problem nor did we actually underperform.

[Paradigm]

Iran's football right now for whatever reason is having a flourishing of offensive mids and forwards, just noted Mehrdad Jemaati of Foolad Khuzestan today who apparently plays for Iran U-23 too, and Bakhtiar Rahmani from the same team.

So hiring a defensive coach for Iran at this time might not be the best fit. But I agree with Dr D, let's wait and see how things turn out. The cost of hiring this coach is reportedly 2 million US dollars per year for each of the three years (compare that to Ghotbi's amount!)

I hope the IFF leaves out a clause in the contract so that if things do not go too well, then they have a way of getting out of the obligation without having to pay for all of the three years. Btw. when is the next tournament Iran is supposed to play in?

Martin jaan, in reference to Iran not being capable of beating South Korea in the AC, I have to say Iran did beat a full strength SKorea team on their home turf 1-0 under Ghotbi back in September 2010. Iran's AC line up was very similar to that same line up. My feeling is that SKorea wanted to revenge that home loss in the AC (I read that in an interview with Cha Duri after the match). So maybe it was best if we had not played that friendly with them at all because Iran always tends to alternate successive results with SKorea. (Our history stats is also almost exactly 50%-50%)

[Mansoor]

It's indeed amusing how many are comforting themselves by acting as if we had had a coaching problem and therefore were underperforming.

No doubt, none of the few previous coaches was of international class and able to make the team play above the actual strength level while Queiroz surely has the potential to do so (for 4-5 times the money of course).

But everyone in his sane mind knew that the most likely scenario would be that no coach would be able to make up the lost ground in WCQ with a tough schedule to go and that with this AC draw Iran would 99% go out in quarterfinals. And while Ghotbi only lost one competitive game while having a perfect AC group stage (who was the last Iranian coach to achieve that??) and going out in extra time to Korea, now people left and right try to act as if we would have been champions if we had anyone but the one we had.

If I had missed the AC and would read your comments now, I would assume Iran was eliminated in group stage with 0 points, lol.

Iran's AC performance was absolutely reflecting the potential of the current team. We are good enough to beat teams like Iraq, DPR and UAE under normal circumstances, but just not fully on the level of Korea, Japan and Australia! That has nothing to do with coaching, except of the factor, that some coaches like Hiddink are able to achieve sth special with an unspecial team, and Ghotbi surely isn't one of those.

We neither had a coaching problem nor did we actually underperform.

This is actually an excellent post. It basically shows that some matters can not be resolved through debates and discussions, and it depends on different factors such as person's objectives, perspectives, background, knowledge, understanding, etc.

I give an example before I can clarify:

In United states, there is a never ending discussion about abortion. It has divided the nation for decades and continues to do so.

If you leave a conservative Christian and a liberal in a room for three days to debate, and then comeback, they would still not convince one another. Why? because for one, the priority is the "unborn baby's" life and for the other one, the life of the mother and her right.

For as long as that is the perspective, and the objectives are different, and the understanding of when would that living agent be considered "unborn baby", the matter would never result in agreement.

The same goes here:

We can look at the table and score from person's perspective and things may look "ok". To some even looks "good". 9 points in group stage, and then vallah, elimination by superior federation in extra time.

To some, football matters not the numbers in a paper. Lucky bounces and let's "bezan ziresh khoda bozorgeh" does not qualify someone to be "good" or "ok" coach. How other Iranian coaches can do, or did before does not either. It is about how well the team is prepared to play football, how players are chosen, how players are positioned depending on their quality, game plans, strategies, tactics, and particularly real time game time decisions are the factors that qualifies a coach to be "good" or a "failure".

I belong to later. Why? because of my objectives and how I watch the game.

Also, my background is another factor that does not let me see Koreans or any Asian team as "superior" team. I have witnessed Asian competition for over four decades, and despite all the shortcomings we have had for the past three decades, the talent and the level of passion have overwritten any organized federation in Asia.

My background is the witness to me that we have been competitive for decades despite down fall of our federation in the past 30 years.

Even with not so "ok" coaches like Mayeli and a pool of young talented players, we embarrassed these Koreans.

Even with better coaches like Branko we defeated "the just finished in top four in the world" Koreans, and the year after same with the Japan. Neither one of their superior federations allowed a "coach" like Branko to be distracted. Football was played in the field and better prepared team prevailed.

Even with this pool of talent and another not so "ok" coach, we played the same Korea in Azadi less than two years ago. We never bowed to them, and the federations did not play any role, especially when Koreans had to fight so hard just to comeback and tie.

For me, papers don't decide, football does. If so, UAE with excellent management and investment should always finish in top four, but "level of talent and passion" has not let them get there despite years of effort.

I don't approve anyone to me to be "ok" or "good" if he is not able to take a pool of talent and get them reach their "ceiling" level. If someone else can, I want that someone else and I won't settle for less, and simply consider it "failure" and "coaching problem" otherwise, particularly in national level.

Of course it can look amusing to others with different perspective but it is not a laughing matter to me. It is rather tragic that we can settle for such ordinary person because someone else in the past did the same or worse, and a group of people exaggerated him to be a "qualified international coach" and at the end, all was forgotten because of papers and numbers and federations and ...

[Martin-Reza]

I agree on the basic point that many discussions can't lead anywhere. I just think you don't do yourself a favour when you compare the 1996 Korean team to today's Korean team, just as a sidenote.

My personal football expertise tells me the team with the better league and more and better legionnaires will eventually win under normal circumstances, and that's what happened. We can either think about how to improve our league and get more players to Europe (or rather develop more players with potential to go to Europe), or we can simply blame it on the coach.

[Mansoor]

I agree on the basic point that many discussions can't lead anywhere. I just think you don't do yourself a favour when you compare the 1996 Korean team to today's Korean team, just as a sidenote.

My personal football expertise tells me the team with the better league and more and better legionnaires will eventually win under normal circumstances, and that's what happened. We can either think about how to improve our league and get more players to Europe (or rather develop more players with potential to go to Europe), or we can simply blame it on the coach.

Again, another excellent post and I'll explain why:

I fully agree with your concern about our football. There is no doubt in my mind that we have a huge gap to fill in terms of improvement, particulary in youth level and the league. The league's biggest problem is the corruption, and that brings us back to the same circle I have been discussing here.

Similar type of problem that brought a year old coach to be our national team's head coach, is also responsible for our league to be stuck where it is. It is the responsibility of people like you and me to expose and inform. I don't blame any coach for that. I blame the media, the federation, and the fans involved in this unfortunate incident, to let others manipulate them like that ....

[Martin-Reza]

Without going into the discussion about how Ghotbi got this job, the point I was up to was that he, based on how I rate Iran and their Asian rivals, did not underperform with the team. He surely didn't overperform, he was no coach who achieved more than what the team should normally achieve with some average coach.

That of course involves the subjective part of my rating of the teams, why this also might lead to a neverending discussion.

What actually differed Ghotbi from other coaches was that he was bigmouthed and talked as if he was a coach who could make a team "overperform".

[Paradigm]

I agree on the basic point that many discussions can't lead anywhere. I just think you don't do yourself a favour when you compare the 1996 Korean team to today's Korean team, just as a sidenote.

My personal football expertise tells me the team with the better league and more and better legionnaires will eventually win under normal circumstances, and that's what happened. We can either think about how to improve our league and get more players to Europe (or rather develop more players with potential to go to Europe), or we can simply blame it on the coach.

I almost want to argue that if there was not an over-the-top striker like Ali Daie in Iran 1996, that 6-2 match with South Korea could have simply been a 3-2. Daie really performed at a level that nobody before or after that in Iran football history has. (Azizi in 1997 and Karimi in 2004 came close though).

[Doctor DOOM]

...........
The same goes here:
We can look at the table and score from person's perspective and things may look "ok". To some even looks "good". 9 points in.......

To some, football matters not the numbers in a paper. Lucky bounces and let's "bezan ziresh khoda bozorgeh" does not qualify someone ............

in a nutshell, it is a reflection of one's standards.
different ppl have different standards. (my old analogy of one man's Omlette is another man's 7 course meal)


(note: here's a new one. usually ppl are asking me to be concise. and it is ppl who put my views in a nutshell. and here I am doing it to someone else!
just goes to show nothing is etched in stone and just about ANYthing can happen. a side nudge to ppl who quote difference between koreans and our football)

[Doctor DOOM]

issue of number of legionnaires:
this cant be a very strong factor/evidence to prove which football is better.
yes, it has some validity, but not as emphatic as some of us want to paint it.
coz whether we like it or not, for a group of players to attract the european scouts, their team shd make it to the higher levels of their continental competitions or qualifying for the WC's.
this is far more true in case of closed countries like ours. we are not open societies and open countries where europeans have complete access to. so it restricts our windows of opportunity to only the major asian tournaments.


that's why whenever we reached the final 4 of the asia cup or qualified for a WC, we saw an increase in the number of legionnaires.
who's to say Ciro's team didnt have as many prospects and potential players than MK's (and vierra)?
but MK's team had a bundle of exports, while ciro's didnt, despite plenty of prospects.
right now, we have at least 4-5 players who can easily play in europe (well, if there are that many chinese players employed in various euro leagues, I think I can safely use the term "easily"), but the only one with a couple of rumors is ansarifard!

believe had we reached the semis and had we used our resources well, not only ansarifard, but guys like khalatbari, heidari, rahmati, ando, and maybe one or two more would have been prime candidates for transfer.


individual talent wise I refuse to think the koreans or japanese are that much better than us. but they have droves of exports while we lose our heads over a 32 year old going to schalke, FOR FREE, for 5 months!

so in the end, I have to say lets not use the number of legionnaires as a hammer to force the issue of who deserved to win a specific game


***********************

to all those who keep saying we must improve our foundation and infrastructure and ... .
bezar aab-e paki ro berizam roo daste hamatoon: that thing you have in mind ..... it aint never going to happen.

that sort of infrastructure and foundation that can rival those in japan and korea WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN IN IRAN.
not only that it takes a long long time for realization of it, nor that our country's circumstances and near future dynamics will allow such diversion of resources towards this subject, but also culturally, we Iranians will never ever be able to copy that in Iran.

so vel maatalin aghayoon.
if you're waiting to see that in Iran and only THEN expect our teams to do something, then stop following football altogether.
30 years we have not moved more than a few inches, while japan STARTED its football campaign little more than 20 years back and they built it in a way that in the past 6 asia cups, they have won 4, reached the final in one and I think semis in the other.
how on earth are you going to catch up with that?
we're going at the pace of an inch a year, while they're flying at 100 miles a day.
and every day the gap gets wider. becoz the pace is at different rates. even if we started to match japan's pace (an impossibility. but lets just assume), we'd be behind by 20 years and continue to be behind by 20 ... forever.

so get rid of this "wall" or "un-attainable goal" you've created for yourselves.

the BEST, the absolute best we could achieve is correction of maybe 15-20% of our fundamental shortcomings.
we better live with the fact that we're never going to correct everything in our life-time.


so are we going to remain "too sari khors" just becoz we have our ready-made excuse for not trying? or are we going to say if I dont have that, I have other things that may help bridge the gap, even if nor completely.


there are ways to balance the two sides. each country has its own plus and minus points. ours is the natural talent and the inherent nature of our youth. that's something none of those nations have.
even japan with all their investment of 100's of kids sent to brazil or the koreans or chinese or rich arabs or ... do not have the talent pool we have.

this talent pool needs guidance.
with that single remedy, we wouldnt be that far behind the likes of koreans or japanese.

[Martin-Reza]

^ I don't think we are far behind them. But we are. And yes, good results trigger European transfers, but good results are a sign of quality players, which is the logical reason behind those transfers. I of course recon that luck and small things play a role as well in success and that they then of course also trigger transfers.

I agree that we have talent, but that's only one ingredient for having quality players. Talent alone is nothing, only as part of a good package, and the Japanese and Korean players have the better overall package.

However, as said the gap is not so big and someone like Queiroz could help closing it. There are also other positive signs, like an improved and further improving IPL and the program of IFF hunting for Iranian talents abroad. Those things might get us closer to the leading Asian teams again and if we can qualify for WC and do ok there, this could be an impule for a very positive development with more transfers to Europe, more interest and investment in Iranian football resulting in more success etc.

[Doctor DOOM]

^ I agree with most of the above.

**********

I also have a question to martin and ali and bahram and all those who keep saying "we're behind X and Y. so our losses are understandable AND EXPECTED":

Q1-
why do you watch TM games?
especially why do you watch or follow TM games in a tournament?


do you by any chance think TM takes part in a tournament where there are no japanese, koreans, aussies, saudis, ... X and Y (given your emphasis on infrastrcture and facilities as key factor for success, I may hAvE to add uae, qatar, bahrain, ... also it seems)?

you really think there will be a WCQ or an asia cup where the above mentioned teams do not participate?



Q2-
so when the natural thing happens and eventually TM meets on of these teams, do you switch your TV off?
do you stop watching becoz you know TM SHOULD, by all account, fairness and logic lose the game?

how many of you switch off your TV as soon as you see TM walk onto the pitch against korea or japan or ... ?

and if you dont, plz tell me why do you continue to watch?
(unless you are a sadist who enjoys watching his favorite team get beaten ... where I suggest there are better ways to spend that 2 hours. things like psych-therapy)

so why do you watch?

[Martin-Reza]

^ Well, being a fan is not really logical. You don't choose the best team, if that was the case 99.9% of the football teams in the world wouldn't have fans.

I don't certainly expect TM to lose against those teams, just as I can never certainly expect that we beat Kuwait or DPR Korea. That's football. There are many factors and the better side doesn't always win. But often.

And when the difference in quality is minimal, there is some chance things might go the other way.

But actually I don't even enjoy TM's big matches. Like Nick Hornby put it in "Fever Pitch", that a true fan hates every single minute of his team playing, and it's really almost like that.

What I enjoy, apart from the few moments of joy when the team scores or wins, are more the meaningless games against smaller teams when I don't care so much or rewatching successful games.

Watching TM is something completely different than watching other football. But it's not like I would have a choice. I wish I had one sometimes...

[Ali Chicago]

It's indeed amusing how many are comforting themselves by acting as if we had had a coaching problem and therefore were underperforming.

No doubt, none of the few previous coaches was of international class and able to make the team play above the actual strength level while Queiroz surely has the potential to do so (for 4-5 times the money of course).

But everyone in his sane mind knew that the most likely scenario would be that no coach would be able to make up the lost ground in WCQ with a tough schedule to go and that with this AC draw Iran would 99% go out in quarterfinals. And while Ghotbi only lost one competitive game while having a perfect AC group stage (who was the last Iranian coach to achieve that??) and going out in extra time to Korea, now people left and right try to act as if we would have been champions if we had anyone but the one we had.

If I had missed the AC and would read your comments now, I would assume Iran was eliminated in group stage with 0 points, lol.

Iran's AC performance was absolutely reflecting the potential of the current team. We are good enough to beat teams like Iraq, DPR and UAE under normal circumstances, but just not fully on the level of Korea, Japan and Australia! That has nothing to do with coaching, except of the factor, that some coaches like Hiddink are able to achieve sth special with an unspecial team, and Ghotbi surely isn't one of those.

We neither had a coaching problem nor did we actually underperform.

You put it very nicely and succinctly, thank you.

[Doctor DOOM]

I don't certainly expect TM to lose against those teams, just as I can never certainly expect that we beat Kuwait or DPR Korea. That's football. There are many factors and the better side doesn't always win. But often.



And when the difference in quality is minimal, there is some chance things might go the other way.

1- are you sure it is YOU who just said that (red)?


2- (blue) - and what is the difference between Iran and south korea?
remember I am not asking about the difference in facilities, money, ... etc etc.
it's 11 koreans vs. 11 iranians.
they all have 2 legs, 2 hands, 1 head.
and even factoring in the koreans extra exposure to top quality football, than ours.

in the past 40-50 years since we've been playing them and since we have equal # of wins each, it proves they are not from Mars. they're just as human as us. so are as much fallible and mistake prone as us.

so what is the difference between them and us in terms of goals (for easy measurement), in your opinion?
one goal?
two goals?
5 goals?


****************

I'd like to hear ali's and bahram's and adesy's and .... answers to the previous post's questions (in red bold) too.
why do they watch TM games?
and do they switch off when we play .... ?

[Martin-Reza]

1) Yes

2) I'd say 0.5 goals is the difference, and that mainly because of the heads, and not of the legs .