IRAN - Madagascar

[Keano]

Don't quote me on that but I think there was a motive behind Ansarifard's chants which had very little to do with him missing two very easy setters. They were PP fans who are upset about Ansarifard's U turn on joining PP and they made it known.

That might as well be the very reason and motive behind this lame action. Nonetheless I believe those chanting such inappropriate lines are the ones who should be labeled as "Bee Ghayrat" a true and ghayrati fan wold never turn his/her back on to his team/players, Ansarifard is still a young prospect, such lame practices coming off the seats of the stadiums in such international matches can destroy the confidence and future football of such promising players at such young and delicate stage of their footballing career!

Our people can be at times so intolerant and obnoxious, especially our "Football fans". We got a handful of them in our very own PFDC!

[maij]

That might as well be the very reason and motive behind this lame action. Nonetheless I believe those chanting such inappropriate lines are the ones who should be labeled as "Bee Ghayrat" a true and ghayrati fan wold never turn his/her back on to his team/players, Ansarifard is still a young prospect, such lame practices coming off the seats of the stadiums in such international matches can destroy the confidence and future football of such promising players at such young and delicate stage of their footballing career!

Our people can be at times so intolerant and obnoxious, especially our "Football fans". We got a handful of them in our very own PFDC!

What lies behind those chants and many others like it, is a completely intriguing Mafia style organizations that is driven by money, greed and influences. These so-called fans are being bank rolled by certain influential people who feed the groups and direct them to what they should chant against and whom they should attack all based on their vested interest. And that is NOT a secret at all in Iran. Unfortunately, and not due to anything more than it being the most popular club in Iran , Perspolis fans form the bulk of such groups.


Much have been said about these gangs, but not much written or documented! Club officials and federation like to put a cover on such acts of indiscretion and not expose them to what they really are as such revelation will embarrass a whole lot of people including the government itself which infiltrates into these groups and install their own stooges to promote pro-government policy slogans and chants. As long as there are no serious anti-regime chants, the authorities have always tolerated them to certain extent.


It is a dirty game played on the stands, by minority yet powerful bunch of fans.


That said, there are always the occasional chants that are haphazardly and arbitrarily called by disgruntled groups due to frustrations and not driven by these gangs.

[maij]

Today's comment by Torabian

ترابيان: نمي توانند علي دايي را مقابل تيم ملي قرار دهند

تهران- سرپرست تيم ملي فوتبال ايران گفت: عده اي از تماشاگران با سر دادن شعارهاي بي معني نمي توانند علي دايي را مقابل تيم ملي قرار دهند.

[maij]

And now , Pooladi is confirming what I suspected...

[Doctor DOOM]

I'm amazed nobody's caught on to the daei-daei chant yet.
it was not to make him the rival to CQ or the team or ...
it was the crowd's response to our players missing chance after chance and not scoring simple sitters, which compelled them to chant daei (as in asking daei to rejoin the team to take care of goal-scoring ... since this new bunch cant cut it)

[zzgloo]

I could clearly see the team to be different.........perhaps not yet, neccessarly better.....but TM was different...
The movemnet of the ball, and the type of ball distrebution was very different....something totaly different than predictable TM under Ghotbi or Ali Daie.........

[Babak agha]

^ well I have to agree to some extent with you there: it was obvious that the players, especially Hosseini and Aghili, were told not to play the long ball (bezan ziresh style). That means that the players at least had an idea of what to do when they've the ball instead of the brainless long balls.

They didn't carry out the instruction very well (in terms of building up the play) but at least there were instructions, which is a plus.

[yashar_fasihnia]

although ansarifard seemed wasteful infront of goal, i really liked his movements both on the ball and off the ball, his awareness and some of his passes. his pass to pejman nouri in the 45th min of first half was something i have never seen in iranian football but only in european matches.i havent seen something similar in any of our forwards for a long time now, not even in hashemian who is supposed to be our legionnaire.
however, he needs to be more calm and focused in his finishing shots and he definitely can improve a lot. but, he is different than our typical iranian forward, and i welcome that.

and from the game i saw against madagascar, it seemed to me reza nowruzi was not dropped infavor of hadi nowruzi, but instead, he was dropped infavor of mehrdad oladi and karim ansarifard.
reza nowruzi is more of a target striker and his direct competitors are ansarifard and oladi. hadi nowruzi was playing more of a RWF and his style of play is similar to siavash akbarpour, which is a lot of running and hustling, tackling and reasonable skill and speed which is a requirement for that position.

since this was a single game, and queroz already knew he is going to play 4-2-3-1, he probably felt 2 target strikers will be enough for this game and kept more midfielder and defender options to be tested.

i think it will become more clearer with more games.

[maij]

^ well I have to agree to some extent with you there: it was obvious that the players, especially Hosseini and Aghili, were told not to play the long ball (bezan ziresh style). That means that the players at least had an idea of what to do when they've the ball instead of the brainless long balls.

They didn't carry out the instruction very well (in terms of building up the play) but at least there were instructions, which is a plus.

That is quite interesting ...

While you are at it , give us a hint on what other novel ideas did Queiroz gave the players....You know , something that Daei , Ghalenoei, and Ghotbi completely missed.

[Babak agha]

^ it was a simple idea actually: joone nanatoon enghad nazanin zire toop!!!

Maybe all the other coaches (I didn't make it Q vs them, you did) said it as well, maybe they didn't as they themselves don't know how it should be done either.

But what is important is that Q actually made them carry out the "plan" (which isn't really a plan but basic amateur football principles, which TM lacked in the last 3-4 years). Whether the players were afraid, impressed, or finally got the idea is not important....the important fact is that we didn't see the "bezan ziresh" attitude by our CD especially.

Whether they're going to continue do this in future or not is a second thing, especially against a (physically) strong and fast team which will actually pressurize our players.

The fact that Karimi played right in front of the CBs is further proof of this idea. Q didn't put Karimi there for his defensive skills, he had put karimi there so that at least 1 person could build up the game through vision and correct fast and short passes. Hey could have played any other DM on that spot but he relied on Karimi's play making skills (Xabi is an examole of this), as our goalie, 4 defenders (well actually 2 defenders and 2 midfielders who play in defense) can not build up an attack if their life would depend on it. (crossing and sprints with the ball btw, which hajsafi and heydari actually can do, aren't building up the games. everything before the rushes and the crosses are what you call building up an attack).

But Maji jan this is the simple/basic part of football(analysis). You should be able to see the difference between the last game and the typical games that TM played in recent years without any knowledge of football.

But while you're at it could you give us a hint on what novel ideas Daei , Ghalenoei, and Ghotbi did have? cause you are implicitly claiming that they had. Please enlighten us about the game plan/tactic/strategy of TM in the recent years.

Cause if you ask me TM didn't have any. Why do I say this? cause there was no pattern in how TM played during the same game or when you compare different games, except for the bezan ziresh strategy. We only relied on individual skills (which were obviously not there) of players and chance.

The only time we some glimps of a strategy was when I ran played in AC where we used 3 DM to pressurize the opponent.......but then again when you have 7 players with defensive attitude, pressurizing isn't an achievement. We didn't have any plans for building up the game or what to do when we were in possession.

[maij]

You missed my point Babak Agha Jan.

The point was , how do you know for a fact that the coaches have issued such instructions AND the players chose to abide or ignore such instructions.

Don't get me wrong , your theory makes interesting reading but the bucks stops there. It is an assumption by you which could be a fairytale as far as the actual events are concerned.

The fact remains that no one for sure knows what sort of instructions these coaches give to the players. They are very secretive and protective of such info. I don't think coaches or Aghili himself are that stupid to send aimless long balls up the front , or Route One as the English like to call it. Once or twice or a few times , perhaps we can digest but he does it religiously with club and country . Don't you think that someone somewhere has told him about this ?

[Martin-Reza]

I started to watch the game again but so far only got untilhalftime . But I must say actually we didn't play that bad and we had 6 clear chances until the halftime whistle actually and unfortunately only used one.

Also what we shouldn't forget that basically with Shojaei, Khalatbari, Rezaei and Afshin our first and second choice wingers were unavailable and playing with the third or even fourth choice like Hadi Norouzi, centreforward Ansarifard or Daghighi we can't expect wonders.

[zzgloo]

I do not claim to know exactly what was going on......
But these are what I noticed,just paying attention only to the players' movements.

1- Tm players were never siggled out, they were always moving in close vecenity.
2-There was very little " take the ball to the corner area , and cross across toward the goal" what we saw alot during Daei and Ghotbi Era.
3-offensive Players on right side and the left side, had the ball for a longer time, and moved the ball toward inside the Box from the sides.
4- There many passes to inside the Box.
5- mid field / offensive players moved around alot,and exchanged places.

[Babak agha]

You missed my point Babak Agha Jan.

The point was , how do you know for a fact that the coaches have issued such instructions AND the players chose to abide or ignore such instructions.

Don't get me wrong , your theory makes interesting reading but the bucks stops there. It is an assumption by you which could be a fairytale as far as the actual events are concerned.

The fact remains that no one for sure knows what sort of instructions these coaches give to the players. They are very secretive and protective of such info. I don't think coaches or Aghili himself are that stupid to send aimless long balls up the front , or Route One as the English like to call it. Once or twice or a few times , perhaps we can digest but he does it religiously with club and country . Don't you think that someone somewhere has told him about this ?

True these are assumptions based on observations, just like the logic behind induction and deduction in science

What we saw was that there were significantly less mindless long balls from Aghil and Hoseini. Now this could mean a couple of things.

Either the other coaches were too dumb to tell Aghili not to that, while Q was smart enough to tell him not to.

Or Aghili didn't obey the instructions of other coaches, while he did obey Q.

Or the opponent was so weak that couldn't pressurize Aghili so much, so that he would get nervous, lose overview and just rocket one again out of reflex.

While I do tend towards the third option, I also take into account that the players want to impress Q as he doesn't care about the names and the status of the players (yet) and will select the ones that carry out his plans/instructions the best, and the fact that Q is on a way higher level than any coach TM has had in the recent years (if not all time) and will stress the principles of basic game plans/strategy more than the other coaches (instead of just trying not to lose and rely on counters and luck, which TM has done more than once or twice in recent years).

Now those long balls by Aghili and Hoseini are not solely their fault. It happens on the highest levels and is done by the best defenders in the world these days. It is actually one of the recurring topics on football talk shows where they analyze the game strategy and the buildup of teams. They keep showing defenders who opt form the long balls and point out the fact that these days defenders are just strong, tall, fast players without any vision, game reading abilities, passing abilities or common football sense. There are no beckenbauers, koemans, de boers, etc etc.

Instead these days teams rely on "controlling midfielders" who are not pure defensive midfielders, but actual playmakers who play deep and take over the playmaking duties off of the CB. The ones like Barry, Busquet, Xabi Alonso, van bomel, schweinstaiger, etc etc.

Unfortunately since Bagheri and neku, his during time at Pas, we didn't have any defensive midfielders who had vision, a good pass, and were able to join the attack when needed. The DMs that we have had in recent years (including neku) didn't help the CBs in building up the game. They either didn't make themselves available in the spaces to receive a safe short pass from CB, or when they did, they were either in the wrong position or didn't already have an idea what to do before receiving the ball, so they would return the ball back to CBs. So Aghili and Hoseini didn't have much option but to rocket the ball up field. Now the coach can tell them not to do that as much as he wants, but as long as the CBs don't have a safe short passing option they either keep passing the ball to each other or will just rocket the ball.

Q tried to prevent this by not only telling them not to do it, but also by giving them an option in form of Karimi, who remained close to the defenders, made himself available to receive a pass and didn't return the received passes. The only problem is that Karimi is not really a controlling midfielder. Thats the difference between a high level coach with experience and the coaches we had these years. Anybody can see the problem, pointing out a problem is not a skill nor does its require that much experience/intelligence. As long as you're not laj baz and biased you can see the problems/shortcomings. However, coming up with a solution to the problem is where experience and intelligence come into play.

It seems that we have a highly potential prospect in form of hadadifar, so let's hope he will fill in the void of Bagheri, or a young Neku. Or hope that we'll find a new defender out of nowhere who like khakpour and golmohamadi can build up an attack by good vision and good passing, and is able to go up field when needed.

Once again these are simple and basic football principles which are easily observable and do not need to be pure assumptions and fairytails.