Iran - Mexico from my point of view.

[Doctor DOOM]

[Doctor DOOM]

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It was clear TM desperately needed a shock treatment after the second Mexican goal. A shock that would have jolted the team into pro-activity and take them out of reactionary tactics.

Good coaches do apply such shock treatment, some even at the cost of major players. But this never realized. And the team was left in the lurch to end up making even more mistakes and concede the third goal.

For example, leaving the immobile and inactive Daei on the pitch resulted in Mexican defenders joining in the attack, which mounted on the team progressively. And any team under mounting pressure will succumb, and make silly mistakes, as we did.


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9- 10- 11- 12-

[zzgloo]

DD jan.....I did read your opinion...and as always I respect it.......yet,I defenetly do not agree with most of it.......
The tytle of this thread is " My opinion on the game "...so, here is mine....
........
Branko did an excelent job.......Everybody,including the mexicans themseleves agreed that we played better during the first half....and mexico was ,as you said, very beateble !!, but you said, you do not know why,and you do not care.......but I do !!!!
the reason was, Branko out-coached the mexican coach...he took mexico out of its rethem,and out of thier game....Thier best players,marquez,and Borgetti and all were just nulified !!, Branko imposed Iranian football over number #4 fifa ranked football in the world.........
Are you with me so far ?
The secound half ........The secound half had to have a different strategy !...why ?...because, the mexican coach is no dummy..he by two subs,improvised,as suspected by Brankp, and Branko had to make a decision...which ,he chose to play defensively........you might say,he should not have...but, continuing attacking could also had back fired,you are not sure,,nor am I.......He thought, since, even trinidad tobago kept sweden ,by defending,the whole game, we should be able to do so,for 20 minutes also....untill , Mirzapour's Goof !!............
We played very good.....I liked this game much better than our game 8 years ago with USA,that we won 2-1......
More over, Branko is not resposible,that Iranian league can not produce better alternatives to mirzapour......

[Doctor DOOM]

Hehehe , zz jan, there needs to be some corrections here:

1- first of all, branko did certainly NOT out-coach anyone, least of all Lavolpe.
If you are familiar with football’s quotes, you’d remember the phrase : “The second half is the Coaches’ half”

I don’t need to go over what happened in the “coaches’ half”.

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2- “taking out Marquez and ..” ?
hehehe.
Actually any out-coaching and out-foxing that was done, was done by Lavolpe, who despite previous predictions, which relied much on a few players like marquex, borgetti, …, the coach actually shuffled them around, and actually based his tactics on other players who did the job.

So while our idiot coach was obsessed with “names”, he never ( even till the end of the game ) noticed the Mexicans had other plans !

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3- someone throws himself into the well.
Would you do it too?
T&T chose to do that , and out of extreme luck, scraped through. So what?
Does that make it happen each and every time to each and every team?


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4- on mirzapoor, I suggest you read the long version’s item #5 once more.


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and finally, actually defending the all too apparent failure of a coach, who never had any plans to get his team back into the game,
who lost the momentum due to his irrational cautious ( read ; wimpy ) approach,
who looked so confused and lost for ideas that made him look like a little kid in large sized clothes,
who forgot the basic factors in a football game such as substitution,
who chose wrongly, arranged wrongly, and refused to correct the wrongs,
who, ….

… well, it just makes me wonder …. !


but I agree on one thing:
branko is not responsible.
It is we and dadkan who are responsible for this lost opportunity.

When we shd have changed him, we deterred and didn’t.
When we shd have acknowledged branko’s limitations ( aside form his new-found laj baaz attitude and vengeful behavior towards some players ), we shd have asked him to leave.
We shd have acknowledged he was NOWHERE near the WC league, and by persisting with him ( just becoz under him we beat n korea 1-0 !!! ) we will be damning our fate to a limited, restrained and under-developed mind.

Yes, we are to be blamed, as we usually don’t bother to be PRO-active, and are always comfortable with being reactive and docile.

Yes, dadkan is to carry the most blame, as I believe he has committed an act of treason, by compromising the fate of our nation’s football, just so his previous decisions don’t look bad !!

Yes, we are at fault, for still not seeing the truth that supporting a failed assistant coach, based on all the wrong notions ( hospitality, “helped us in busan”, “helped us in qualifiers”, .. ) we must feel some of the responsibility for this lost opportunity.



But as you say, each one is entitled to his own opinion.
Just as I choose to say “the whole world revolves around earth. And nothing that you say or do can dissuade me from this “truth””.

[zzgloo]

DD jan,,,,we defenetly think differently.....but,,God bless you, I still love you .....
Do you think, it would have been impossible to have finished 1-1 had mirzapour not made the mistake ???
And if that happened ?..whom would have been the smart coach ?...The coach of Number 4 team in the world ? or Branko ?
By the way..DD jan.....there is no reason to react to my opinion with "he he he he ".....
As I do not do such with yours.

[Doctor DOOM]

zz jan, I dont care about the numbers here.

numbers such as ranking, shd never mean anything.

otherwise we shd have stayed as world's #72 and no team shd move up ( or down ) the ranking.

secondly, a smart coach would have taken daei and even vh out by half time or about 60, and injected two speedy strikers who not only would keep the mexican defenders at bay, but also maybe score the winning goal on counterattacks.

did we have ANY counterattacks?
who ?
where?

and assuming we did try, .... send the ball to whom?
the strikers who were miles behind?


that is what a smart coach would do.

or at least use his third sub to change things around.
losing 3-1 or 5-1 changes nothing. we have lost our chance to advance.
but seeing how we effectively played while attacking in the firest period, it shd have given the incling that playing attacking football will pay better dividened than the moronic defensive cowardice.

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oh, btw, did you all know, the very same "spy" branko used to get his info about mexicans, said what?

after the game, he said branko is mad.
becoz he had told branko, the only way to contain the mexicans ( many of them his own students and players, like marquez ) is to attack them and not give them space and time to mount attacks .
no wonder we did well in the first half.

but in the second half ( THE COACHES' HALF ) , we saw what our idiot jumped-up assistant coach is made of ; pure, unadulterated cowdung !

[Ali Chicago]

My Two cents

I don't want to get into either Branko for and against camps. At this stage it is too late anyways. But truth (in my opinion) has to be said. Branko and even his mentor Blazevitch seem to be overwhelemed, overtaken, confused, timid in big event.

Both of these guys at the crucial moments loose focus, dont' take risk, loose control, are under influence of names and can't show leadership.

First Blazevitch
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Let's rewind, you guys are hard core (football Khooreh) soccer fan like me. Back in Ireland Iran game in Tehran (WC2002 qualification). If you have the game taped as I do, watch it. Around 70th minutes Iran is pounding Ireland for first goal minutes (Iranian Tv shows Iranian Bench), Blaz face is all agitated, he is not calm and that face did not show he is in control (Btw comapre that with the face of Sweden's coach during the 0-0 tie against Trinindad just two days ago, during the whole thing he seemed at least in charge).

I am just a youth coach in US and by by no means, I don't claim to have knowledge or acueman of coaches of these caliber, but I know this much, when things are tough, team is looking at my body language and get's cues from me. If I act like I have no clue what to do, team feels the same.

Brankovitch coaching and body language yesterday
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As DD has talked about his tactical decisions, I won't repeat his comments, but for the love of god someone tell me why Dai was left in the game? Why?
He touched the god damn ball maybe 5 times if that? Even Russian News agency in his analysis of the game points out that one of the reasons that Mexico was able to attack in the second half was the ineffectiveness of Iran's forward line and half of that line was Dai. This guy's soccer level is below the world cup and even premier league. Why he had to play 90 minutes.
As for his body language, there were two shots of him on the TV, in first he seemed confused and indecisive (while Iran was under the barage of Mexico's attack from both right and left flanks to stretch Iran's defense in width) and second one was when he came and kind of screamed (assumingly at our players) when Iran had one of those useless "bezan zeeresh" centers. I
Iran's team was going down the drain in the second half and what did he do? Our midfield in the second half was mostly non existant. Even Kia was non existant. Is playing in the team-e-Melli god given right on German based players? Why Branko did not make a single change in the mid field? Even Neko Nam was not on top of his form. Why we have to play with the same god damn team over and over. Maybe Nekonam and Dai and kia and Dai aren't hugry enough. Why are they always guarenteed a spot?
As a coach you observe the players during the practices and let the best player plays not just names. Yesterday, I dare to say Karimi, Nekonam and even Kia were just names. Teymorian on the other hand for the first game on the world scene and all was good.
As a coach one has to have "Balls" excuse the rude term. This guy is not the man. Iran Varzeshi summarized it nicely when their head line was "Mozde Tarrs" which rough translation for those who don't know Farsi will probably be Consequence of Fear".

To be honest, I wish Iran had played like Ivory Coast, they lost, and they probably won't make it to the second round, but the way they played, it showed they beleive in themselves. They showed they think and beleive they can play soccer like anyone else.
First half Iran played liked them, but I bet in the dressing room they were told to play defensively. Either this or Iran's players were not fit. Which if the latter is the case, it is still Branko's fault. He had this team for 4 years and for the world cup for 2 months.

Bottom line, unless we put away timidness in our attitude and simply just go for the half decent show in the world cup, we wont' get anywhere. I was in a gathering and Khodadad Azizi was there, he was telling (truth or lack of it I can't verify) that Jalal Talebi was scared to death in between the halves in the game against Germany (WC98) and was telling us, don't go forward. I think the game was 0-0 in the first half. He was saying seeing him so scared and conservative (in his opinion at least), was partly to blame for the lackluster performance against Germany in WC 98.

I know some of you after reading this will write we lost to number 4 in the world and we played well first half and all that. Maybe it is not only Brankovich's fault after all, maybe it is this attitude of not beleiving in ourselves. Maybe it is this attitude of lack of self confidence that is the root cause.
US is playing Czech right now as I write and Czech are number 2 but US players are going for a win and even if they loose it won't matter cause they did their best. As the farsi Proverb says " Tarsoo dies thousand times and braves die only once"

Thanks for the venue to vent out.

[Amirza]

It was just reported on Pars TV that Daei and Karimi had a fight in the locker-room at halftime. They also said Zandi did not start because of mingling with lady fans couple of days before the match. Finaly - they said Karimi refuses to play the next game.

[Nokhodi]

It was just reported on Pars TV that Daei and Karimi had a fight in the locker-room at halftime. They also said Zandi did not start because of mingling with lady fans couple of days before the match. Finaly - they said Karimi refuses to play the next game.

Well PARS TV is talking out if it's arse. It's apparently Branco and Karimi who have problems with each other, not Branco and Daei.
Zandi is not starting because he has a flu and his leg is injured again. It's the same reason he barely played for Kaiserslautern last season.
edit: Zandi is now ok, and will start Saturday versus Portugal.

[Doctor DOOM]

very good and apt points ali chicago jan.
do join in discussions and offer your opinion more often.

btw, their loss of control and being overwhelmed is one true thing, but they both lose sight of their one weapon: substitution at these moments.

ciro, for all the respect I have for him, was lost in bahrain game, as he refused to sub in more strikers like samereh when we were losing , and he had nothing more left to lose !!


on why some of us dont put away timidity:
Iranians are known to be comfort oriented. and you gotta admit, "change" needs work and we despise hard work !

therefore, we force ourselves to be happy with whatever we already have, and dont set our aims high.

some of us are happy with bread crumbs and dont want to make the effort to get the whole loaf.
so they support a stagnant, mediocre and restrained idea, as it is the easier route !

imagine if Graham Bell was Iranian.
we'd never, EVER have telephone. and we'd all be still using pigeons and horse-riders to send messages to each other !
THIS is what is being forced here by some friends! "be happy with this crap"!!
"we're not good, so dont expect progress" !!!
"this is all we can have and afford" !!
....etc.

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I still say we can change brako with Dr Z .

one more game with wrong selection, wrong tactics, wrong subbing .... and we are .... !!

I still beleive we can save face if we remove this obstacle now.
it's all about wrong or right decisions the coach makes.