Reaalistic friendly opponents

[Rooyintan]

It seems that there are far too many Iranian people who keep saying negative things about this year's friendly opponents, now the reasons could be:

1. They keep seeing Japan, South Korea, Australia play football giants (countries who won World Cup, Euro, Copa America) and just wish for Team Melli to play such opponents.

2. They do not like Ghalenoei as a Head Coach or don't like his personality, are fuming at his undefeated run so far and just want to see him fail

3. They just want to see Team Melli to only play regular AFC national teams since they are familiar and their country names are easy to pronounce unlike "Cape Verde" that IRI journalists did not know who to pronounce

4. They are true admirers of grass-rolling football or just huge admirers of West Asia's Arab teams, since it reminds them of Felestin-e Mazloom, Jerusalem, Najaf, Karbala, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Beirut, Dubai, Doha

For all those people, just wait a bit longer, in October Team Melli will be playing at Jordan International Tournament, opponents being Jordan and Qatar/Iraq

Now back to reality:

FFIRI do not have the amount to afford likes of Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, etc. If Team Melli plays them usually it is at a neutral venue such as match with Brazil (2010) in UAE, Chile (2015) in Europe. Some of the big teams would not even want to play or host Team Melli in their country, for example Germany refused to host Iran vs Poland in 2017 for political reasons.

Post 2006 World Cup, teams that have hosted Team Melli in friendly versus their national teams were: Mexico (2007), Turkey (2018), Sweden (2015), Russia (2017), Tunisia (2018), Bosnia-Herzegovina (2009 & 2020), North Macedonia (2016), Montenegro (2017), Bulgaria (2023), Armenia (2010).

Hosted as neutral venue outside of AFC countries: Tunisia (2012) in Hungary, Venezuela (2017) in Netherlands, Angola & Montenegro & Belarus (2014), Uruguay & Senegal (2022) in Austria, Albania (2012) in Turkey.

Strongest teams that came to Iran: Russia (2023), Costa Rica (2008), Senegal (2009), Iceland (2009), Guinea (2014), North Macedonia (2009), Bolivia (2018), Togo (2018), Trinidad and Tobago (2018).

Realistic opponents to come to Iran are Angola, Guinea, Togo, Libya, Bolivia, Venezuela, Possibly Mali, Burkina Faso, Ecuador.

Do not have any false and unrealistic hopes.

[Artaxerxes]

It seems that there are far too many Iranian people who keep saying negative things about this year's friendly opponents, now the reasons could be:

1. They keep seeing Japan, South Korea, Australia play football giants (countries who won World Cup, Euro, Copa America) and just wish for Team Melli to play such opponents.

2. They do not like Ghalenoei as a Head Coach or don't like his personality, are fuming at his undefeated run so far and just want to see him fail

3. They just want to see Team Melli to only play regular AFC national teams since they are familiar and their country names are easy to pronounce unlike "Cape Verde" that IRI journalists did not know who to pronounce

4. They are true admirers of grass-rolling football or just huge admirers of West Asia's Arab teams, since it reminds them of Felestin-e Mazloom, Jerusalem, Najaf, Karbala, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Beirut, Dubai, Doha

For all those people, just wait a bit longer, in October Team Melli will be playing at Jordan International Tournament, opponents being Jordan and Qatar/Iraq

Now back to reality:

FFIRI do not have the amount to afford likes of Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, etc. If Team Melli plays them usually it is at a neutral venue such as match with Brazil (2010) in UAE, Chile (2015) in Europe. Some of the big teams would not even want to play or host Team Melli in their country, for example Germany refused to host Iran vs Poland in 2017 for political reasons.

Post 2006 World Cup, teams that have hosted Team Melli in friendly versus their national teams were: Mexico (2007), Turkey (2018), Sweden (2015), Russia (2017), Tunisia (2018), Bosnia-Herzegovina (2009 & 2020), North Macedonia (2016), Montenegro (2017), Bulgaria (2023), Armenia (2010).

Hosted as neutral venue outside of AFC countries: Tunisia (2012) in Hungary, Venezuela (2017) in Netherlands, Angola & Montenegro & Belarus (2014), Uruguay & Senegal (2022) in Austria, Albania (2012) in Turkey.

Strongest teams that came to Iran: Russia (2023), Costa Rica (2008), Senegal (2009), Iceland (2009), Guinea (2014), North Macedonia (2009), Bolivia (2018), Togo (2018), Trinidad and Tobago (2018).

Realistic opponents to come to Iran are Angola, Guinea, Togo, Libya, Bolivia, Venezuela, Possibly Mali, Burkina Faso, Ecuador.

Do not have any false and unrealistic hopes.

Spot on, some here seems to forget that we are a pharia state and one of the most isolated nations on earth because of I.R meymoon occupation, when I.R are gone and whit a openminded and diplomatic iranloving government we can have higher demands.

[Rooyintan]

Also at times, when FFIRI arranged high profile friendly such as Mexico (2007) top players such as Mahdavikia, Karimi, Hashemian, Ando, Kaabi and few others refused to go to Mexico perhaps scared to get injured. Algeria (2022) was a decent friendly but Team Melli players were not happy about that friendly and not motivated at all hence they lost the game.

Other times, a decent team comes to Iran but brings only their domestic/neighbouring league players without their European based players, Jamaica (2007) came to Tehran without their European-based players, all their players were from Jamaican and Carribean leagues and ended up getting demolished by TM with a scoreline of 8-1.

Other times, a decent friendly ends up being counted as unofficial match such as Tunisia (2022), Team Melli played with 11 different players in each half.

Other times, friendly matches are played without fans or behind closed doors without any broadcast.

Hence considering all these reasons for teams that came to Tehran from post 2006 WC onwards: Russia, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Senegal, Guinea, North Macedonia, Iceland, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Zambia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Angola are decent or mediocre friendlies.

Also TM managed to play few non-Asian high profile friendlies outside of Iran such as Brazil (2010), Uruguay & Senegal (2022), Chile & Sweden (2015), Mexico (2007), Turkey (2018), Tunisia (2012, 2018 & 2022), or reasonably good such as Russia (2011 & 2017), Algeria (2017 & 2022), Panama (2017).

Some decent friendlies got canceled such as Norway, Poland, Greece, Ivory Coast during CQ era.

[perspolis#1]

I think friendlies should have purpose.

Work on your weaknesses, otherwise what are we working on. For years, I've watched friendlies and some devolve into us trying aliasghari on countries of various continents/races etc. Whats the point?

We suck at playing any team with decent tempo because our players are so slow and we struggle with coordinated transitions so we need to play African teams that can break quick or European teams that are organized and methodical. The names don't matter as much as the strength does.

Besides Japan, Saudi, Australia, Korea, sometimes Iraq if they play physically and press, Asian football IS SLOW. Against England, our players could not even win the ball back for minutes at a time because England kept winning their own ball back. Then we held ok against the US but they had so many fast players and on a couple of occassions almost picked our pocket to get goals against Beiranvand and our defense with the ball.

There is zero to learn playing against middle eastern teams. Zero. Only Saudi is a worthy friendly, We've played Qatar, Iraq,UAE so many times I already have a perfect gameplan for them if we meet them in WCQ I can give general and we overpower the nonJapan/Korea Asian countries anyway. Avoiding losses to them is more mental game than technical/physical.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Spot on, some here seems to forget that we are a pharia state and one of the most isolated nations on earth because of I.R meymoon occupation, when I.R are gone and whit a openminded and diplomatic iranloving government we can have higher demands.

I like the neologism pharia - that's either a spelling error or a clever combination of Sharia and Pariah

[oracle]

everyone who follows tm knows the problems of scheduling decent ones since the 1980s...
That's not an issue.
Issue is general bragging about His 5-0-1 record
And acting because of his record against average fifa ranking of 95 of tm opponents ,HE HAS PROVEN HIS CRITICS WRONG, and he is claiming his critics are hiding now.......
plus why play angola in azadi w/o fans?
IF THE ISSUE IS MAHSA ANNIVERSARY IS APPROACHING(DERBY HAS BEEN POSTPONDED AS WEL) and don't want have crowed ,that's not iff decision... ...but if that's not an issue then why not
play angola in esfehan in fooladshar or nesfe jahan..or even sirjan...game will get sold out and its good or players confidence and the fans.
above are the issue, NOT GOOD HEAVY FRIENDLY MATCHES not being scheduled.

[Abtin]

I'm still wondering how they managed to get Iceland to Iran..
Germany I can understand, with the ties between the nations and the amount of players Iran had in the BL back then.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Kazakhstan only

I want to see how we do against a team which has dominated its nations league group and done very well in the euro qualifiers group

[oracle]

Iran if I recall twice dominated Kazakhstan..
Kazakhstan has come a long way..playing constantly against ueropian uopianmakes big difference...there was member nMe Oldman in pfdc bCk in the days and HE USED TO 10 KILM OF IRAN TERETOTORY IS IN EUROPE AND WANTED iran to file petition to fifa to play its game in European zone....if that happened we had 0 wc appearance and 0 euro cup appearance BUT WITH TALENT OUR PLAYERS Hve , WE WOULD OF HAD OVER 75 PLAYERS PLAYING IN EUROPEAN CLUBS
all over Europe and maybe a club teams in conference league or even Europe league...and tm would of eventually qualified to European championships and maybe sneak in the WC here and there..our players would be in different level.

[Rooyintan]

Kazakhstan only

I want to see how we do against a team which has dominated its nations league group and done very well in the euro qualifiers group

I also like to see Team Melli take on Kazakhstan. Only 2 matches with them was when they were AFC member.

[Rooyintan]

I'm still wondering how they managed to get Iceland to Iran..
Germany I can understand, with the ties between the nations and the amount of players Iran had in the BL back then.

Possible reasons:

1. Despite no direct diplomatic relations between the two countries, Iceland is a non-EU member perhaps make it easier to negotiate. Remember, another non-EU member Norway was supposed to play Team Melli in 2017 but for unknown reasons the match was canceled. Team Melli was going to travel to Norway.

2. Iceland at the time had a very low FIFA ranking, which meant that their fee was low.

This Angola match costed FFIRI something between $300,000 to $400,000 USD. I hope Bulgaria at least paid Team Melli $600,000

[Rooyintan]

Realistic non-Asian Teams who most probably will accept playing in Tehran in the future depending on their schedule would be:

Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Guinea, Mali, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Libya, Niger, Mauritania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua

Possible: Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, North Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jamaica, Iceland, Burkina Faso, Mali, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, DR Congo, Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, Burundi, Namibia, Botswana, Guinea Bissau, South Sudan, Cape Verde, Zanzibar

Neutral Venue/Away: Tunisia, Algeria, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uruguay, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Norway, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Georgia, Cyprus, Switzerland, Finland, New Zealand