TM-News-

[PSGman#19]

Where is Australia now though? Have they had any tangible benefit from those 6-0 losses? They've been losing to Qatar and Arab teams the last few months. If they are your model for TM, I don't think we see eye to eye.
There is practicing wrestling or weight-lifting against someone your similar strength/in your weight class or less strong than you to build up your strength, but trying to out-lift guys involved in Strongman competitions or out-wrestle olympic caliber athletes right when you are starting out is not a great idea.

Like any sport, we need to practice to get better. Getting your ass whipped to prepare for a small Asian-only tournament that is 2 months away does not seem helpful to me. I wouldn't mind the ass-whipping in 4 months though, when we need to start preparing for WC, but at the moment, a 6-0 loss like Australia had will hurt us more than help us.

We lost 7/1 in friendlies just one month or two before WC98 which was good for Iran.

I don't care if Australia is losing 6/0 to Brazil or 1/0 to Qatar in friendlies. Friendlies are friendlies. We should stop thinking losing (eventual big) in a good friendly is the end of the world and accept to learn about it.

Having strong difficulties against big opponent in friendlies will help you the day you meet a very good team (Japan, Australia, Korea) in Quarter, Semi or Final of Asian cup.

Our players don't have the experience of big european league clash or champions league.

Playing average teams won't help our player elevate their level, the day we will need it.

[PSGman#19]

BTW, the loss of Australia against Qatar in friendlies remind me when Japan lost some meaningless match in WCQ but was always there when it matters.

[Afat11]

Didn't we lose our good coach Ivic before that WC because of that 7-1 loss to AS Roma? Yeah, that didn't harm our team chemistry and chances to have clueless Talebi thrust into the job right before the tournament began.

That was our golden team that got screwed out of a probable round of 16 spot due to a friendly loss (against a club team btw, which I thought most people were against playing, so I don't understand why you bring it up).

Australia cannot score/defend. They have many problems in their team currently, and you will not convince me otherwise.

Iran is planning for how to tackle teams like SK, Japan, and Australia by playing SK in 2 weeks, so you shouldn't be complaining about that. We do not need to play Sweden or Costa Rica to prepare for SK. We can just play SK.

I think CQ has a decent plan to prepare both for the better Asian teams as well as the lower Asian teams that we cannot lose to in the group stage. Challenging ourselves like we are in a rebuilding phase right before this tournament is foolish. We have to do that to prepare for 2018 WC, but not for a tournament that is 2 months away.

[Camran khan]

For decades we only play shit friendlies against third or fourth tier teams in the world. If stronger teams were available they brought B, C, youth or Burger King worker teams.

And now you complain about Portuguese clubs, South Korea, Kenya and Iraq? Sadly this is among the top lineups for AC prep I've ever experienced and you guys talk as if we play Italy and Argentina on regular basis.

We haven't played the best teama in the world exactly, but imo we have had very good preperations so far , especially for the world cup. How many other countries had the kind of training camps for such long periods that we had? We moved the date of our damn league to make it work. So IMO everyone blaming bad preperations due to our failures are making up BS excuses.

[Keano]

Many folks here wanting to play the top flight national teams, make such wishes mainly for the sake of their own entertainment, rather than the actual beneficial aspects of the friendlies. Our football/Footballers/People in charge/Football fans have zero tolerance and capacity for losses, be it in meaningless friendlies or tournaments. Rest assured upon the thrashings by such powerhouses every single one of you critics of our "poor" friendly matches will be the first to jump the gun and attack and badmouth the coach, players, IFF etc.

We wanna play against decent teams that we can display some football and execute some of the tactics the coaches wish to play, for against world class teams cannot be achieved and carried out.

For the sake of TM I'd much rather playing against average/decent teams such as South Korea and Kenya, where we can practice for the AC, where at best, the top teams may be compared to average/semi-decent world teams.

Keep calm and worship me and Mila joon for being such great football fans!

[Keano]

We lost 7/1 in friendlies just one month or two before WC98 which was good for Iran.

I don't care if Australia is losing 6/0 to Brazil or 1/0 to Qatar in friendlies. Friendlies are friendlies. We should stop thinking losing (eventual big) in a good friendly is the end of the world and accept to learn about it.

Yes and for the very same reason we saw one of our best TM coaches ever, getting sucked overnight and prior to the WC. Did you not remember that? Ivic who was widely loved and respected by every single one of our national team players got fired upon that phony "Friendly" loss!

Let's not fool ourselves and for a second try to be as reasonable and fair as we can please!

[sarbaz]

IF and IF we actualy get the friendlies that they are talking about without any cancelations and somehow arrange a friedly vs. Australia
I say it is a very good preparation
Look at this TM's presumed schedule

Nov.14 th vs. Kenya

Nov.18 th vs. Souht Korea

Dec.16 th vs.South Africa

Dec. 19 th vs. Zimbawee

Dec. 28 th vs. Palestine

Jan. 4 th vs. Iraq

[MR.ESTESNAII]

Kenya -116th team in the world. Congrats IFF! Japan is going to win the whole thing. This is a waste

[M.U.F.C]

We haven't played the best teama in the world exactly, but imo we have had very good preperations so far , especially for the world cup. How many other countries had the kind of training camps for such long periods that we had? We moved the date of our damn league to make it work. So IMO everyone blaming bad preperations due to our failures are making up BS excuses.

I completely agree with you here. I remember when the reporters asked Branko Ivankovic about comparison between Iran NT performance at WC 2006 and 2014 first he praised CQ and team . After that he said unfortunately I did not have the players for full two months. He said that if he had that opportunity he could get better results at WC 2006. Note that he won Asian games 2002 with our u23 team where he had opprtunity to prepare that team with long camp.

[sarbaz]

There is no question that this preparation Schedule for TM by CQ and IFF is much better than what Jalal Talebi,branko ivankovic,Amir Ghalenoie and Afshin Ghotbi had.
That's for sure so despite the poor quality of our friendly opponents I still expect us to at lest reach the
Finals of the AC

[Afat11]

Kenya -116th team in the world. Congrats IFF! Japan is going to win the whole thing. This is a waste

Kenya has more players in top leagues than we do lol. Africa also is a tougher continent. Don't think the ranking means much, remember when we lost to Guinea in Tehran a few months before Brazil? Yeah, rankings are meaningless, especially when we are top of Asia after not even playing games.

Also, don't kid yourself, any team can win the Asian cup. Iraq did win convincingly in 2007. The same thing could happen again this time. Japan has had great players in Europe for years, but they also have their faults and do drop games to normal Asian teams all the time. They are not guaranteed anything, as we are also not.

The only thing about Iran that gives me some hope is that if we make it out of our group, we are very defensively sound. Of course we can have a miracle goal scored on us like how we lost the 2011 Asian Cup match to Korea, but I feel our defense is even stronger this time around. Maybe even the strongest defense in Asia. I think at the very least, we will be able to take every elimination game in the cup to penalty kicks if we are not able to win.

I could easily see the final being between us and Japan or Australia and the game going to penalties. Then again, we can lose in the group stages. The ball is round, and we should just wait and see what happens. Japan had an easier group than us at the World Cup and all their friendlies against top teams didn't really help them to do much better than us at the tournament. They actually looked weakest with SK, while Iran and Australia looked okay.

[persianfire]

IF and IF we actualy get the friendlies that they are talking about without any cancelations and somehow arrange a friedly vs. Australia
I say it is a very good preparation
Look at this TM's presumed schedule

Nov.14 th vs. Kenya

Nov.18 th vs. Souht Korea

Dec.16 th vs.South Africa

Dec. 19 th vs. Zimbawee

Dec. 28 th vs. Palestine

Jan. 4 th vs. Iraq

good considering last time we played only 2 friendlies between November and January.

28 December 2010 : 0-0 Qatar
2 January 2011 : 1-0 Angola

[PSGman#19]

Didn't we lose our good coach Ivic before that WC because of that 7-1 loss to AS Roma? Yeah, that didn't harm our team chemistry and chances to have clueless Talebi thrust into the job right before the tournament began.

That was our golden team that got screwed out of a probable round of 16 spot due to a friendly loss (against a club team btw, which I thought most people were against playing, so I don't understand why you bring it up).

Australia cannot score/defend. They have many problems in their team currently, and you will not convince me otherwise.

Iran is planning for how to tackle teams like SK, Japan, and Australia by playing SK in 2 weeks, so you shouldn't be complaining about that. We do not need to play Sweden or Costa Rica to prepare for SK. We can just play SK.

I think CQ has a decent plan to prepare both for the better Asian teams as well as the lower Asian teams that we cannot lose to in the group stage. Challenging ourselves like we are in a rebuilding phase right before this tournament is foolish. We have to do that to prepare for 2018 WC, but not for a tournament that is 2 months away.

That's why i say results of friendlies shouldnt matter. I think IFF evoluted since that time and will hve more patience today than in 98

[PSGman#19]

Kenya has more players in top leagues than we do lol. Africa also is a tougher continent. Don't think the ranking means much, remember when we lost to Guinea in Tehran a few months before Brazil? Yeah, rankings are meaningless, especially when we are top of Asia after not even playing games.

Also, don't kid yourself, any team can win the Asian cup. Iraq did win convincingly in 2007. The same thing could happen again this time. Japan has had great players in Europe for years, but they also have their faults and do drop games to normal Asian teams all the time. They are not guaranteed anything, as we are also not.

The only thing about Iran that gives me some hope is that if we make it out of our group, we are very defensively sound. Of course we can have a miracle goal scored on us like how we lost the 2011 Asian Cup match to Korea, but I feel our defense is even stronger this time around. Maybe even the strongest defense in Asia. I think at the very least, we will be able to take every elimination game in the cup to penalty kicks if we are not able to win.

I could easily see the final being between us and Japan or Australia and the game going to penalties. Then again, we can lose in the group stages. The ball is round, and we should just wait and see what happens. Japan had an easier group than us at the World Cup and all their friendlies against top teams didn't really help them to do much better than us at the tournament. They actually looked weakest with SK, while Iran and Australia looked okay.

Iran has a pretty bad record on penalties

I would have been more confident if we had a good offence rather than a good defense. The day we will concede an aleki goal (deflected, own goal, penalty wrongly accorded...) how will the team react?

Football is scoring more goal than the opponent

[Afat11]

Iran has a pretty bad record on penalties
I would have been more confident if we had a good offence rather than a good defense. The day we will concede an aleki goal (deflected, own goal, penalty wrongly accorded...) how will the team react?
Football is scoring more goal than the opponent

I don't think we are disagreeing on the point of our offense needing to tune up before the Asian Cup.

Where I think we are disagreeing is on what is more beneficial for the team to develop its offensive character in just a few weeks. I think we can agree that a game against Germany (although it would be entertaining) is not what we need between now and January. If we didn't defend the whole game, we would likely lose 8-0 like Saudis. It would be a great test for our defense, but as you said we cannot rely on our defense.

The next possibility would be to play Costa Rica or Sweden. Do you think a young Sardar Azmoun will be able to find an offensive rhythm and goal-scoring confidence against these teams? These teams are strong, and would likely frustrate our players. I agree that these matches are extremely necessary after the Asian cup, but really, can you tell me with a straight face that our offense can develop in 2 months playing teams like this? Anything is possible, but this is not probable. CQ sees this and doesn't want to risk our strikers going into the cup without confidence.

Hence, playing teams like South Korea, Kenya, Iraq, and others of a lower caliber is all we can do in the next 2 months to develop and strengthen our offense. Our offense needs a few games to experience a little bit of freedom in play in order to develop our passing and vision.

We cannot do this when Swedish defenders are constantly hounding these players. We need them to gain some confidence and match-practice. Getting ready for better national teams should be our vision for Russia 2018. In the next 8 weeks though, we should focus on Asian football and preparing for this tournament. For this tournament, we have the right gameplan. After the tournament, if we are playing no friendlies or constantly playing Kenya, I am right behind you with the pitchfork.