SUM UP: Iran at WC 2014 ! tactical and technical analysis!

[Adesor Vafaseya]

Well, now that two days have passed and we are maybe more calm and objective, I start off to sum up what we did from my point of view.

First of all, realistically speaking, we did not deserve to join the round of 16.

every player and CQ said "we were too tired after the Argentina game". Well, a team that gets tired after 2 games at WC does not belong to the round of 16!

But given the problems Iran faced, starting from preparation, no proper opponents, terrible south africa camp, no funds, shrinking jerseys etc etc.... we can be more than proud of this team!!! They did more than anyother team could do, if they had our problems, and still they outperformed the rest of Asian teams.


Now, from a technical point of view, things that I observed.

CQ's Pre World Cup Medicine:

- Physical Stamina.
The man was right as we all saw stamina is one of our problems due to the very low professional football environment in IPL. CQ put a lot of emphasizes on tough physical training in three preparation camps of S. Africa, Austria, and first days at the corinthians club facility. Result: TM increased its running per Kmh from the low 6-7 Kmh of average IPL games up to 10.8 kmh!

- Defence.
for more than decades our biggest fear was our defence (with a short period of excellence in WC98 thanks to Tomislav Ivic). We always sucked in defending, afraid of long crosses in the box etc etc... CQ organized the defence with an apporach similiar to Dino Zoff's Italy at Euro 2000:

we played a 4-4-2 or in detail a 4-4-1-1 with all midfielders as defensive midfielders. This resulted in two defensive lines.
What CQ cleverly arranged was the gap between the 4 defenders and the 4 midfielders! The two lines were very close to eachother that enabled a compact defending.
in detail:


In neutral (kick off) position:

4-4-2 (4-4-1-1)


------------------Haghighi------------------

--Montazeri--Hosseini---Sadegi--Pooladi---

--Heydari--Teymourian--Nekounam--Hajsafei-

--------------------------Dejagah--------

--------Goochannejhad--------------------



When defending / during opponenets build up:

4-1-4-1 (with very narow space between DF and all DMs)


------------------Haghighi------------------

--Montazeri--Hosseini---Sadegi--Pooladi---

------------------Nekounam---------------

--Heydari--Teymourian---Hajsafei--Dejagah-

------------Goochannejhad----------------


When in attacking mode (specially 2nd half Argentina):

4-3-1-2


------------------Haghighi------------------

--Montazeri--Hosseini---Sadegi--Pooladi-----

----Teymourian--Nekounam--Hajsafei------

----------------Shojaei-------------------

--------Goochannejhad---Dejagah---------



Strategy wise: as I said similiar to Dino Zoff's Italy at Euro 2000.
Invite the opponent to your own half, hold tight and compact with a narrow gap between defence and midfield, once with the ball: counter.


In practice:

vs Nigeria: compact defence but not enough support for counters. Ashkan had to hold the ball too long till the midfield moves forward, which was slow to enable quick counter.

vs Argentina: compact defence in the first half, and surprise change to 4-3-1-2 in the second half, which supported both Ashkan and Gucci more, and created chances.

vs Bosina: the gap between midfeld and defence was not as narrow as previous games, due to the urge of scoring. 2nd half team ran out of gas completely.


The difference between Italy Euro 2000 (reaching the final) and Iran WC 2014 (knocked out at group stage) was purely due to quality of players and stamina!
Italy could seat back, defend compact, but when they countered, they could deliver! We couldn't on counters unless we changed to 4-3-1-2!
Italy wasn't tired after 6 games and could go on playing another 4-5 games at the same speed if they had to! We couldn't and ran out of gas after two games!


Clearly tactically the team was very sound and well trilled by CQ!
What was missing was the quality and stamina of players, which comes down to IPL, and also no proper youth levels!


But for what we had, and did achieve, the players should be all proud of what they did, and IFF needs to tackle the lack of quality of IPL immediately, if we ever want to advance at international level.
We have the players, and with good coaches like CQ we can be tactically trimmed and ready, but without the base work in homeland at the domestic leagues we possibly can never get to the R16 at any world cup!

[zzgloo]

I deleted my post, because I did not want to impose my view on adesor's " tactical & technical sum ups "......, and better, I open a thread with more appropreate topic.

[Doctor DOOM]

Vs. Nigeria, we merely parked the bus. and nothing else.

Vs. Argentina, in the first half, we parked the bus. In the second half, we played a proper ''defend and counter'' game.

Vs. Bosnia, we were doing acceptably until we conceded. And this is when people asked ''what if we concede? What are our plans?'', nobody had any answers. CQ also showed he had no plans or ideas for such a contingency.



Parking the bus is very different from playing a defensive game. We seem to confuse the two.
You keep 8,9 men in a very tight formation with very little space in between all horizontal and vertical lines, all within and around your 18, with very little duty to move out or up.
Easy to merely pack 10 men with little space in between, in layers, inside a very small area and ask them to hoof any ball that comes within hoofing distance of them, with the express purpose of getting ball away from the area as far as possible
This may be fine to use if we're meeting an extremely dangerous and technical giant (like Arg). Simply because the objective is not to concede or to keep the score line as low as possible.
This makes life for any team difficult. As we saw against Nigeria and argies. But it has absolutely nothing for our team.


But a defensive game is not only this. You open up at the right moments and show you can hit the opponents at the break, which may hold a couple of their defenders back. You also press even if in the midfield and on the halftime, and show variation. difficult to play a proper defensive football, which includes opening up and countering, as well as possession football where we have plans on occasions we possess the ball.

This is a sensible tactic and many teams employ it, to varying success.
We did this only in one half of the WC. And it was the best 45 minutes I have seen from TM in a world cup.





In the third game, given the physical toll the first two have taken on our mostly static line up, and the different objective we had (at least SHOULD HAVE HAD), we started the mistakes even before we stepped on the pitch.
When you have two heavy games, using the same set of players, it is obvious some of them may be fatigued and may underperform.
Also when your objective was to WIN this game, you should have used the correct players who can help with this, and tactics that can get you the win. CQ failed in both these issues.

A couple of fresh legs would have made a world of difference in the team's overall performance on the pitch. Pace being a key issue here.
A couple of changes, using more offensive minded players in key positions would have given you a chance at a goal.
A slightly less defensive mindset and tactic also would have been useful.

This doesn't mean abandoning defense. But maybe starting with JB who'd give you all the three requisites instead of the slow, error prone shojaei was a no brainer.

Also it was apparent CQ was never going to use more than his defensive set of 13/14 players and the rest, like hadadifar, Rahmani, ... were just to make up the numbers. Then keeping a player like Khalatbari would have been very sensible. If not as a starter, but for occasions we need quick moves or when we fall behind.
Lack of foresight by CQ


Same thing for his irrational subbing in of Heidari. Crossing to whom? RGN? We didn't have a tall forward who'd be a target man. In fact those 2/3 headers RGN got came as big pleasant surprises.
So what was the reason or use of bringing in a slow, defensive player whose only use in such situations would be to '' send crosses''?
But to whom?
This one was amazingly illogical.


All in all, the third game proved CQ never had any plans to advance. Lest he'd have some plans to score or play an offensive game.
From his selection of 23 it was apparent he's gong real heavy on defense.
Which was fine given the first two games.
But if you give yourself a target of possible advance, then you ought to have people who can deliver that strategy, as well as plans to achieve that.
He didn't.


Now, whether he didn't believe in us or our players' abilities or he just simply has no idea of an ''offensive strategy'' (judging from his past record at various clubs/teams), I am not sure.
But despite all the ''show and hollow words'', he proved he didn't see us getting out of the group from the beginning!
The same ''show'' when he uses a slow player and then stands on the byline and shouts for him to move faster and push up!!!! Utterly ridiculous. You knew the chap is slow. Why expect something he isn't capable of?


So I thank him for the two games we had. But won't shed a tear if he's gone.
Especially when in Asia cup our objectives are totally opposite of this.

[Adesor Vafaseya]

it comes all down to domestic league. If the dometic league doesn't deliver the physical fitness required to play an offensive game, and if the running stamina at dometic league is a pathetic 6.5 - 7 kmh (in Germany its over 12 kmh, in most European leagues its over 11 kmh) than CQ did the best thing he could do, i.e. feed the defence.
We did have game plans and we indeed were able to implement them i.e. in 2nd half vs Argentina we were systematically defending and using spaces to counter. We failed vs Bosnia on fitness level, thats why I say we didn't deserve to go to R16 if all palyers say "we were too tired after Argentina game" , which was only the 2nd game in WC!!!
Main thing is we developed a momentum at this WC, that can deliver results in the future if we keep working on it i.e. keeping the strong defence and at the same time increasing stamina at the domestic league and slowly but surely take it from there to go more offensive when needed.
I am therefrore in favour of keeping CQ to build up from the point we left and not by having a new coach and start all over from zero again.

also looking at the various changes within the 4-4-2, changing from 4-4-1-1 into a narrow spaced 4-1-4-1 into a 4-3-1-2 on regular basis during the game, it shows that we were systematically defending and had a game plan. perhaps with better preparation games and freindlies we could have been better at delivering them...

[Paradigm]

Iranian players did not have enough coordination, teamwork, or synergy when it came to midfield and attack. That is probably because they never played enough competitive games ahead of the tournament to test out different systems of play, "what if" scenarios, and gain necessary confidence. Also the fitness is not at the same level as the European or South American teams.

[Adesor Vafaseya]

^

precisely!

if CQ goes and we bring another top tier coach, he will have no choice but implement the same defensive strategy as soon as he sees few IPL games and the level of stamina, fitnes, tactical understandings etc etc...
Tomislav Ivic, who was a top tier coach did the same in 1998, CQ did the same from 2011-2014.... !

Point is if we get rid of CQ now, a new coach will come, start all over again from zero, and end up exactly where we are today, hence, we would have not progressed. But if we would keep CQ, at least he can build on the fundementals he developed with the team and take the team a step further ahead!

Of course, its not a "one man show", whole league has to improve and we need to hope this political sanctions fiasco is over, so we can play decent friendlies and better preparations next time round.

for the sake of this thread and the tactical sum up, it was at least proven to me, that yes "WE CAN" play disciplined, tactically sound football with complex systematic positioning and changes! all we need is to get better and better in domestic league and have more competitive friendlies, and we will get there. But if we do not get our acts together and IPL teams continue this path of fitness and low speed games, where a team gets tired just after two WC games, we possible will never reach R16 at any WC!

[Doctor DOOM]

^ you see, until a month ago, if you asked most members here if our players are capable of playing a tactical, disciplined game, almost 90% would either laugh or say no. Because it is ''hip'' or ''highly enlightened or progressive'' among our fans, to put down Iranian players and belittle them!!!! ... and dump all the mistakes and failures on them, as if no coach can make mistakes!

But we saw, as you also admitted, that they can and are quite capable.

This is why I say the capability and potential is always there. It just needs to be honed and shaped. And if a coach is willing to work with them and doesn't erode their confidence or thinks too small of them, I am sure they can surprise a pot of us and show their true potential.

[Paradigm]

Also I'd have to iterate, it was a mistake not to include Khalatbari in the World Cup squad. He could have been a really good technical sub. Cameras showed Maradona in the stadium during the Iran-Argentina match. Imagine if Khalatbari could have been there playing in front of his former club headcoach and possibly making a goal assist!

[Adesor Vafaseya]

^ you see, until a month ago, if you asked most members here if our players are capable of playing a tactical, disciplined game, almost 90% would either laugh or say no. Because it is ''hip'' or ''highly enlightened or progressive'' among our fans, to put down Iranian players and belittle them!!!! ... and dump all the mistakes and failures on them, as if no coach can make mistakes!
But we saw, as you also admitted, that they can and are quite capable.
This is why I say the capability and potential is always there. It just needs to be honed and shaped. And if a coach is willing to work with them and doesn't erode their confidence or thinks too small of them, I am sure they can surprise a pot of us and show their true potential.

well, it seems we both have the same thoughts and conclusion on this, however our approachers/solutions are different.
You put emphasizes on TM headcoach to enahnce a better football from TM, while I put the emphasizes directly on the league coaches to produce the kind of fitness and players, that are needed for TM headcoach to be able to fullfill these tasks.

In the end of the day, its a combination of both (TM coach and league coach). Problem in Iran is, there is no harmony between the league and TM. Other federations have a spacial committee that coordinate the demands of both national coaches and league coaches and brings them together several times in a season to create that harmony.
This falls within the responsibilities of IFF!

Now, its no secret, that this a short coming of IFF since probably day 1 of IFF establishment! Things got to change!

[Doctor DOOM]

^ true.
The only difference is we don't expect much from one set due to their under exposure to modern football. But when we play through our nose and it gets rubbed into our face every time that CQ is a famous int'l coach, then one ought to expect MORE from him.
If we had Daei or GN as TM coach, then proportionately, our expectations would be lower. And their names wouldn't get thrown about by some fans as if they're referring to some God walking on earth.

[Paradigm]

Just popped in to say congrats to Doc Doom whose 2nd most favorite team just won the quarter finals shoot out with Costa Rica. Once they switched goalkeepers in minute 120, I got flashbacks of what GN did for Iran in the Asian Cup 2007 but led to a backfire. It seems though the Dutch keeper did not need much warming up in order to save two penalty kicks. Now there will be two great semifinals on Tuesday and Wednesday next week: Germany vs. Brazil and The Netherlands vs. Argentina. All big time teams making the final four; can't ask for more than that.