ORLANDO PIRATES VS IRAN

[babak_iran]

mashallah ehsan va mehdi!

[saadat_abad]

OMG THE RESERVE TEAM OF ORLANDO PIRATES SCORED A GOAL AGAINST US?
KHAK BAR SARE IFF

Khob chi mikhay Magee!! Vaghti Ahmadi is in goal u want Iran not to get scored on? Badbakht soorakhe

[MR.S]

someone get me a video clip of the goals

[OFFSIDE_1]

Let's as you suggest not compare apples and oranges...S. Korea, Japan if they parked the bus, would have gotten 3 pts in their WC campaign. Those teams were willing to take risks, and rely on their talent. Attacking innevitably leaves you vulnerable at the back. We barely attacked (and when we did we rarely threatened) the oppositions goal. Yes we beat S. Korea 2x in WCQ but in all honestly, they probably deserved a better result than they were given. Your game plan must be adaptable, and we are going about our AC preparation in a similar style as our WC preparation. I think TM will be in for a shock. We have risen our expectations not because of TM's calibre, because many people justifiably argue that this TM is not as talented as 1998 (or 04, or 10). We have risen it because expenditures have gone up. We have one of the "best coaches in asia" according to some.

By the way have we progressed? In 1998 we had 3 pts, in 2006 we had 1 point from an African nation...in 2014 we had the same result as 2006. We also scored less in 2014 than we did in 1998 or 2006...I think too many fans are blinded by the CQ factor. Expectations are high only because of 1 name...not because of the reality of our football. In fact, preparation has been weaker (despite spending more), and IFF has been even further disorganized despite spending more...look at the Vingada tragedy.

When we say QF or bust, or be in the finals of AC or bust, it's not necessarily because of the talent level...it's because of the way IFF (and CQ as an employer of IFF) have mismanaged preparations leading up to AC.


NO complains about my car manufacturer...just the gear shift! CQ is employed by, and represents the IFF. CQ is part of IFF at the moment



I guess you thought flying to S. Africa with a squad with more than 50% of players who won't be in Australia is a good way to spend money? Let me guess, you must think IFF isn't paying any fees to be in SA, because broke SA club teams can afford to foot our TMs bills right? We would be better of arranging friendlies against Al Kuwait, and Al whatever than to play a B squad of a S. African league...at least we could then argue we are likely playing to prepare for arab football mentality while trying difficult environments and testing tactics and so forth...

um, no .... the Japanese and Koreans are practical. If they felt they could get 3 points by parking the bus, they would ..... Tactics are tactics. The spanish teams in the past have been accused of playing a slow-it-down, and boring style while winning championships. Do you think they should have played based on a different tactic just to be entertaining?

and as for our 2 wins against Korea not being deserved ...... which one are you referring to? The one in Tehran where we had 10 players??? most would argue that a the team that loses with 10 players probably deserved better results given that they're down to 10. Here we have a team that beat the koreans with 10 players, and you call it undeserved? Or was it the win in Korea that was undeserved?? or was it the recent win in tehran that was undeserved ..... I am losing track, please help.

[CHaMiLLionaire]

someone get me a video clip of the goals

Do you want fries with that?

[K. Nader]

Let's as you suggest not compare apples and oranges...S. Korea, Japan if they parked the bus, would have gotten 3 pts in their WC campaign. Those teams were willing to take risks, and rely on their talent. Attacking innevitably leaves you vulnerable at the back. We barely attacked (and when we did we rarely threatened) the oppositions goal. Yes we beat S. Korea 2x in WCQ but in all honestly, they probably deserved a better result than they were given. Your game plan must be adaptable, and we are going about our AC preparation in a similar style as our WC preparation. I think TM will be in for a shock. We have risen our expectations not because of TM's calibre, because many people justifiably argue that this TM is not as talented as 1998 (or 04, or 10). We have risen it because expenditures have gone up. We have one of the "best coaches in asia" according to some.
By the way have we progressed? In 1998 we had 3 pts, in 2006 we had 1 point from an African nation...in 2014 we had the same result as 2006. We also scored less in 2014 than we did in 1998 or 2006...I think too many fans are blinded by the CQ factor. Expectations are high only because of 1 name...not because of the reality of our football. In fact, preparation has been weaker (despite spending more), and IFF has been even further disorganized despite spending more...look at the Vingada tragedy.
When we say QF or bust, or be in the finals of AC or bust, it's not necessarily because of the talent level...it's because of the way IFF (and CQ as an employer of IFF) have mismanaged preparations leading up to AC.

I take issue with this whole 'we were undeserving of the Korea wins' concept. If this is an argument that someone is going to make, then they're implicitly saying that we were undeserving of our place in the World Cup. If that's the case, what business do we have expecting results against Tier-1 global sides when we can't even beat our continental rivals (with Asia being one of the weaker continents). At the time, CQ saw defense as our strong point and used it to our advantage. Australia saw offense as their strong point and put up a great performance against the Dutch. However, weak defending saw them concede 9 goals in the World Cup. S. Korea alone conceded 4 to Algeria while Japan conceded 4 to Colombia. Also, it's easy to look back on the past and say 'generation X' was the best. Nothing has ever come easy for us aside from the final round of 2006 WC qualifying. The generations you cited (98, 04, and 10) all had their issues. The Australia match is our most famous because it truly was a miracle how we overcame that deficit. With 20 minutes left in the match, that generation seemed more likely to watch the WC at home than play in it. Same with 2004. We nearly were eliminated in the 3rd round of WC qualifying. Even the Asian Cup was close to becoming a failure after we 2-3 minutes away from losing to Oman in the group stages. 2010 is another example of Team Melli living on the edge with 10 minutes to WC qualification (except we failed). Yes, Team Melli is one of Asia's elites but even our so called best have rarely succeeded without troubles.

In regards to progress, I already made that clear. We've have improved tremendously over the GN - Daei - Ghotbi years. Many here were claiming that we've become a tier three Asian side. Now, the very same people are the ones demanding that we become Asian champions and get major unprecedented results in the World Cup. Why are you just looking at World Cup results? By that token, both Japan and Korea have regressed since 2010 when they were in the second round. Korea must have regressing for 12 years since they've failed to make the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup. I know these come off as extremes but that's exactly what you're doing (with a very small sample size).

Lastly, tournament expectations should largely be judged on team talent. Of course, there are a plethora of other factors that often dictate whether or not a team is capable of winning. One reason people are often disappointed with Shojaei is because was a European legionnaire but was not always able to show that quality for the national team. Now imagine being Japan and having a starting line-ups-worth of Euro legionnaires. Would you not expect this side to succeed in a continent of mostly amateur sides? You also mention mismanagement but I don't see how this is different from what we've encountered for the past 30+ years of IR. Yes, it's not practical and none of us are happy about it but this did not start (nor will it end) with CQ.

[MR.S]

Do you want fries with that?

congratulation you are hired

[Bi-honar]

So we are against warnings like ''danger of electrocution'' or ''danger, poison'' and just want to carry on putting our hands into the bloody socket, or drink the bloody liquid .... and wait. If it ends on death, then making a frowning face, we can say ''oops, sorry'' or ''bad man.... you bad, bad man'', waving our finger!!!!

Bikhod nist migan mordeh parasteem Doktor joon

[O-ZoNe]

I take issue with this whole 'we were undeserving of the Korea wins' concept. If this is an argument that someone is going to make, then they're implicitly saying that we were undeserving of our place in the World Cup. If that's the case, what business do we have expecting results against Tier-1 global sides when we can't even beat our continental rivals (with Asia being one of the weaker continents).

Very simple, practice makes you better. If you want to beat every asian team, including the best ones, practice against stronger opposition, and then any asian team will be easy. Do you believe as most do that Japan is Asia's classiest and strongest team? Their league, football development, # of legionnaires, womens, youth, and mens programs are the best in Asia and comparable with many non-asian teams. Let's look at their last 5 matches...

They played in order Uruguay (2-0 loss), Venezuela (2-2 draw), Jamaica (1-0 win), Honduras (6-0 win), Australia (2-1) win.

Now let's look at Iran's last 5 matches...Orlando Pirates B (3-1 win), Kaizer Chiefs (2-0 win), S, Korea (1-0 win)...and thanks to our WC we also played Bosnia/Nigeria/Argentina. I mean if it wasn't for the WC we would have 2 club teams and one Asian national team as our only preparation to date. DO NOT FORGET we lost a chance to play Venezuela as well.

Now you tell me, who is going for success and who is trying to maintain a reputation. Who is expected to bring home the trophy, and have players based in Europe while the other is just satisfied to lose or draw big teams and is content with second division European bench warming?

Luck is part of the game, but to be honest, so is bad luck. Against Australia had the Aussies scored just one of the 3 goal posts they hit, 98 would never have happened. During S. Korea, if Gucci was two inches wide, Brazil 14 would never happened. Why can we just never learn to win decisively. How many times have we had to rely on other results, even this time around, our fate could have been in our own hands earlier, but how many WCQ games did we blow and fail to claim all the points? Why are we constantly struggling against minnows? How are we giving points up to Vietnam (jr level) and Lebanon and Qatar (senior level). Yes we can't win them all, Japan doesn't win them all, but it's a rarity and treated as a travesty in Japan to drop points to Jordan, but Iran, sometimes we cite difficult conditions, lack of preparation as reasons why points were lost. CQ has embraced and at times perpetuated this culture of excuse making for poor results. If we have poor results, it's not because we had poor preparation and lack of time to team build, it's because those in charge (including CQ) as well as those involved with TM (e.g., players, staff) didn't do enough to rectify the issues.

[GoIran]

Goal videos?

[Doctor DOOM]

I find it very amusing that all of you guys somehow believe that playing "quality" friendlies makes you a better team. if that were the case all the Arab teams would be better than us right now. and guess what, they aren't. playing friendlies is mostly entertaining for the fans, of course the manager can try new tactics, but he can also do that against the B Team of the Orlando Pirates.
half of our team is missing anyway, there is no reason to spend a lot of money on a useless friendly.

Nobody says quality friendlies make you a better team.
We say quality friendlies EXPOSE & OPEN YOUR EYES TO YOUR WEAKNESSES so you could correct them for the more important official games.

But when you are so scared of facing big teams who may expose your weaknesses, then you are not given the golden opportunity to know which areas you need to work on and where your loopholes are. So you step into tournaments and eventually meet a quality opposition who hurt you exactly where you should have been prepared for (if you had the guts)

[Martin-Reza]

AW: ORLANDO PIRATES VS IRAN

The rather close results unfortunately prove that this opposition is challenging enough for the available squad and current stage of preparation.

In fact these games in South Africa probably help the few players who will eventually make the squad better to prepare for our group opposition than all of our previous matches in 2015, because we certainly have to dominate the proceedings and have a possession oriented game against them - in opposite to the tactics we used at World Cup and against South Korea.
I don't think we can play like that vs. Qatar, UAE and Bahrain.

Knowing that we only have three to four starters available and assuming our players are handicapped due to very physical training at this stage of preparations, such low-level sparring partners might well be a good choice for training certain tactical variants.

[pdot]

I dont understand why TM has to go to South Africa for such a camp. is it really worth it, CQ? our 5th division team in Zurich has better facilites than from what i saw of the SA camp...apart from that: might sound somewhat naive or not feasible, but how about fundraising from our part (iranians abroad) for our beloved TM? i just throw it into this discussion.

The reason it's in South Africa is that it is a remote location away from distractions and quiroz actually has connections there.

[Doctor DOOM]

OMG THE RESERVE TEAM OF ORLANDO PIRATES SCORED A GOAL AGAINST US?
KHAK BAR SARE IFF

??? Am I missing something? Was the IFF the defenders in the team or the goal keeper?

It is that or those person(s) who despite the trip being too wasteful, monetarily and otherwise, still went ahead with this silly camp .... most probably because they were receiving a commission for arranging this camp ... probably through their long term south African friends

Nobody in their proper mind would have accepted friendlies against reserves of insignificant clubs in an insignificant FOOTBALLING country with maybe 10-12 of the main squad available ... unless there was money and commissions involved

[Bi-honar]

??? Am I missing something? Was the IFF the defenders in the team or the goal keeper?

It is that or those person(s) who despite the trip being too wasteful, monetarily and otherwise, still went ahead with this silly camp .... most probably because they were receiving a commission for arranging this camp ... probably through their long term south African friends

Nobody in their proper mind would have accepted friendlies against reserves of insignificant clubs in an insignificant FOOTBALLING country with maybe 10-12 of the main squad available ... unless there was money and commissions involved

Doktor joon, man keh digeh mokham daareh mitarakkeh! The same people who complain about sanctions and IFF not having enough money to spend, are the same people that are whole-heartedly behind this S. Africa camp, not to mention CQ's high salary.