Why do our players seldom transfer to Europe?

[Kiarash]

There was still no thread on this case. So why is it, according to you, that our players havent been transferred to Europe? Except for Ansarifard, who basically joined Osasuna because of Nekounam's connections.

I'm interested to know what plays a role in our players not being interesting enough for European scouts even when we had a decent World Cup for our standards. We held Nigeria 0-0 and showed a solid defensive performance while we were almost close to beating Argentina with all their world class players. Yet, not a single player who played that day got signed by an European team while we were expecting at least 2-3 players going to Europe. Even Honduras had NT players getting transferred to Europe after the WC like Brayan Beckeles to Boavista at the age of 28.

Discuss.

[Camran khan]

Don't tell me you didn't see this coming.

[pdot]

There are three realities.
#1. Our players are not good enough to play in Europe. If a team wanted our player they would do whatever it takes to get it. Look at how quickly Athletico got Saeid Ezzatollahi.
#2. Most of our prospects are not trained towards improvement. That is the only difference between us and any top footballing country.
#3. It's too difficult to scout and effectively buy a player in Iran. There are no connections between us and Europe in a footballing sense, too difficult to send a scout to Iran and if you do it's more work to get them to play for your team.

[Kiarash]

Don't tell me you didn't see this coming.

I tried to be serious for once

[Camran khan]

I tried to be serious for once

As was I

[greatpersian]

The standard of our players declined. We are excited to see Ansarifard joined a Spanish second division side but from 1990s to 2000s many of our players moved to the top European leagues directly. Daei, Bagheri, Mahdavikia, Azizi, Hashemian and Karimi to Bundesliga, Rezaei and Samereh to Serie A, Nekounam and Shojaei to La Liga, Ando to EPL.

[PSGman#19]

There was still no thread on this case. So why is it, according to you, that our players havent been transferred to Europe? Except for Ansarifard, who basically joined Osasuna because of Nekounam's connections.

I'm interested to know what plays a role in our players not being interesting enough for European scouts even when we had a decent World Cup for our standards. We held Nigeria 0-0 and showed a solid defensive performance while we were almost close to beating Argentina with all their world class players. Yet, not a single player who played that day got signed by an European team while we were expecting at least 2-3 players going to Europe. Even Honduras had NT players getting transferred to Europe after the WC like Brayan Beckeles to Boavista at the age of 28.

Discuss.

I already answer that but if i am not mistaken, not that much of costa ricans players transfered to Europe (keylor navas, Campbell returns to Arsenal) despite a wonderful world cup.
This time no many of surprises of WC got hired by europeans clubs.

Arsene Wenger said once that he is very suspicious about players that do good in short competition like WC and that they can disappear in long competition such as league, EPL, etc...

[Siavash]

Because they get paid well in Iran and Arab countries.

[princeofpersia1]

Sarbazi is a major factor

[EKBATAN]

one of the main reasons is the HYPE is not there....believe it or not, hype of a country has ALOT to do with it. If you are brazilian, argentinian, or from an up coming country like mexico (before they started sucking), ghana, etc....scouts and teams tend to be more interested. Daei's emergence opened the doors for our players...thats why in that era our players were being looked at because it looked like iranian football was on the rise, so they thought it was the hidden gem. until a bunch of our players went to these teams and didnt do well + we missed out on world cups + we sucked in 2006 + we didnt win any asian championships....so all in all our HYPE died down. Our performance this world cup wasnt praiseworthy enough to get the attention of other teams. we should've showed a little more.


also the trend of buying players after doing good in euros or world cups died down a little too. teams realized having a good tournament doesnt necessarily mean you will always be good. they do more extensive research and if you dont live up to your performance, they forget about it. simple issue with interest in our players is scouts will come watch IPL/PGL or the arab leagues that they go to, they see the quality and they say nevermind.


and finally, its our mentality and lack of professionalism in iran. the era of daei/bagheri/mahdavikia we had more REAL footballers rather than the social media/fashion/party type footballers we got now. they were more professional and had ambition to do good. i feel like most our players now days are content with $



with that said, our best chances of developing our football is outside iran....similar to most african countries and argentinians and some other south americans....and thats in europe. we have enough ex-pats spread across the world and we are already seeing lots of young players playing in various countries. maybe not high profile leagues but still very good to see many many kids who are playing pro or semi pro....it just means a better version of dejagah and gucci is on its way.

[The-Iron-Ghost]

The reality is our players are too lazy to work there ass off to earn the Euro, our top players get paid triple what they would playing in Europe and only exert 1/3 of the effort to get paid triple the amount.

Plus another huge barrier for us is Language, its hard to communicate with players if you cant speak to them. So European clubs look else where so the managers can communicate to their players.

Saying we lack talent is a very stupid remark, their is an abundance of talent in Iran but the problem is we don't know/or cant provide the adequate resources to develop this talent.

Iran really needs to start building bridges to clubs in Europe to send young lads off for further development. Not only would they get better training, but they will also get the experience of playing in a different league with a different style.

[Z Joon]

one of the main reasons is the HYPE is not there....believe it or not, hype of a country has ALOT to do with it. If you are brazilian, argentinian, or from an up coming country like mexico (before they started sucking), ghana, etc....scouts and teams tend to be more interested. Daei's emergence opened the doors for our players...thats why in that era our players were being looked at because it looked like iranian football was on the rise, so they thought it was the hidden gem. until a bunch of our players went to these teams and didnt do well + we missed out on world cups + we sucked in 2006 + we didnt win any asian championships....so all in all our HYPE died down. Our performance this world cup wasnt praiseworthy enough to get the attention of other teams. we should've showed a little more.

also the trend of buying players after doing good in euros or world cups died down a little too. teams realized having a good tournament doesnt necessarily mean you will always be good. they do more extensive research and if you dont live up to your performance, they forget about it. simple issue with interest in our players is scouts will come watch IPL/PGL or the arab leagues that they go to, they see the quality and they say nevermind.
and finally, its our mentality and lack of professionalism in iran. the era of daei/bagheri/mahdavikia we had more REAL footballers rather than the social media/fashion/party type footballers we got now. they were more professional and had ambition to do good. i feel like most our players now days are content with $

with that said, our best chances of developing our football is outside iran....similar to most african countries and argentinians and some other south americans....and thats in europe. we have enough ex-pats spread across the world and we are already seeing lots of young players playing in various countries. maybe not high profile leagues but still very good to see many many kids who are playing pro or semi pro....it just means a better version of dejagah and gucci is on its way.

Very good post.

But finding talent overseas like Algeria for example where all the players grew up in France, is just a short term plan. We might do well for few years then again crash out when these guys retire. We are apparently going through this phase, Dejagah didn't really help us
that much, and his "usefulness" to TM would probably be 2-3 years starting from 2012, and Gucci scored a bunch of goals for us but will die out too now.

That's why I always laugh when people here find players in 2nd/3rd divisions in Europe and pray that they be invited in TM so all our problems will be solved. If you want to improve as a footballing nation, you have to improve your local talent and your league. There is no way out, we aren't going to progress by begging Nazari and co to play for TM. As long as our league doesn't improve as a whole by creating players with ambition that want to play in Europe, we don't have any future in football whatsoever.

[Afat11]

It's a sad time when Iraq, Egypt and Armenia have as many or more players in Europe than Iran.

In my opinion, there is no "star" on the Iranian team. Armenia has had Mkhtariyan come up (he is a young star player in Dortmund). Since he has come, a relatively unrespected footballing nation like Armenia has eyes on it as a potential talent pool. Scouts are sent to Armenia, and the players are signed.

Iran had these kinds of players. Daei and Karimi were the 2 that got attention on Iran. When they were playing well, European teams were trying to pick our young talents like Mahdavikia, Ando, Nekounam, etc.

There is no "star" drawing eyes to our team. If anything, they look at us, and see many average to above average players, but nobody worth them writing home about. If we have 1 star emerge from the lot of Azmoun, Ezatollahi, and Jahanbakhsh, mark my words that 10 other Iranians will be brought to top flight European teams in the hope that they can emulate.

[webmaster]

I would say the quality is not there for them to be interesting for European clubs more than anything else. :-) just look at our Mr. Goal of last years' IPL Karim Ansarifard who hasn't yet gotten ANY playing time in a second hand club(I meant 2nd division) :-)

[Bluegrey13]

I think main reason is military services, I know many young Iranians would do anything to get out of Iran, but they cannot because of Sarbazi, same thing with football players,