POST-MATCH DISCUSSION | vs. Qatar - Asian Cup 2015

[Darloc]

Big lmao at those who said Sardar was poor and Gucci should have played. They can go and hide now!

Gucci is head and shoulders above Azmoun in every field possible. Its just that Gucci is not well fed, especially during our recent games.

About Azmoun... i really hope he keeps this up, if he does then i have no problem if he replaces Gucci.

[TheBoss]

Just lol at everyone who thought we will beat Qatar with at least 3-0. It just shows that there are too many kids on this forum who started watching football yesterday.
Who do you think we are? Germany? Brazil? Spain? We played against Qatar as if they are Germany.
Worst performance since a long time! Bahrain match was better.

wow, thanks big old man, we know our place know. thanks for telling us.

[Z Joon]

People need to let their emotions calm down for a few seconds and then think about the game realistically.

Tactically, this was a great game for Iran. According to CQ's tactics, defend with numbers behind the ball, pounce on individual errors, counter attacks and set pieces.

Watching the highlights of the game, we should have had atleast 1 more goal. Hajsafi dribbled way too much, Gucci was way too selfish too many times, Dejagah should've had his head up and made that tap in pass to Gucci.

Regardless, our defense was superb. We sat back deep, which was an issue..but throughout the entire 90 minutes, there was not one dangerous attack on Iran's goal. NOT EVEN ONE.
Bottom line, Qatar had no business winning this game...they were really poor. Iran played a tactical game but invited too much pressure.

We need to work on executing these counter attacks in better fashion. Our youth against Iraq did a better job of counter attacking.

Gucci was selfish-- understandably so.. his main opponent Sardar just scored a beauty so he wanted to avenge one for himself.

Dejagah was great, kept cool under pressure and with a little more composure - we would've had a second goal.

Two final notes:
1) WHERE IS JAHANBAKSH? This kid needs to play. Neither Khosrow or Shojaei deserve to start over him. I understand that we were leading 1-0, but had JB been the sub for Shojaei, we may have seen a different final 30 minutes.

2) Ando.... what a fantastic ba gheyrat beastly player. His two corners were the reason we scored against Bahrain, and his unbelievable tackle and interception paved the way for Azmoun's goal. He will greatly be missed when he retires. MOTM.

What do you think about the Iran UAE game?

[TheBoss]

Gucci is head and shoulders above Azmoun in every field possible. Its just that Gucci is not well fed, especially during our recent games.
About Azmoun... i really hope he keeps this up, if he does then i have no problem if he replaces Gucci.

he is well fed. but he has become selfish and his shots are weak. I think CQ's reaction after he wasted yet another goal (throwing the bottle and yelling) was telling of what the coach of Team melli thinks about him.

[Team Melli Fan]

[Darloc]

I'm happy we won, and went through.. The defence was solid as usual,marshalled by Jalal Hosseini. By far the most UNDERRATED player in Iran - no-one talks about him! Just does the business as usual. Nekou and Teymourian were solid.

We can easily score more goals, however the teamwork passing between the front 4 is quite poor. Alot of touches,alot of selfish play.. Ashkan did give us breathing space when he uses his speed .. the issue is our defence is too deep, and you're asking alot from the attack to cause problems. It seems most of our wins will be 1-0 and tight wins if are to progress further on.

I'm interested how our set-up will be, if we concede a goal...

Bring on UAE

Bosnia game

[Clockwork]

The biggest problem we have now is that we have to beat UAE. A draw is not enough because they are ahead on goal difference. This is why CQ was flipping out on the failed counter attacks.
I think we just have to play a balanced game and CQ will have to gamble on giving Jahanbaksh some time to gives us more chances in the final third.

[metallica69]

only positive for me in this game was the win

We just cant play like we are playing Argentina every game, we gave Qatar way too much respect.

We need to improve our passing game specially up front between Masoud, Hajsafi, Asjkahn and Azmoun or Gucci.

We have a strong defensive team, but really need to work on or transition from DF to MF to OF

[Darloc]

he is well fed. but he has become selfish and his shots are weak. I think CQ's reaction after he wasted yet another goal (throwing the bottle and yelling) was telling of what the coach of Team melli thinks about him.

For me statistics speak. Most of the time the ball reaches Gucci is some bezan ziresh by Hosseini or Ando. That is not how you feed a striker !

Azmoun might create such superb chances once in a while but sometimes it may not especially against Korea, Australia, Japan etc... that is why i say Gucci is more reliable as a striker.

[TheBoss]

video by AFC

[CHaMiLLionaire]

What do you think about the Iran UAE game?

I don't think tactically, we will change much. I can almost bet that Shojaei won't start since he has a yellow card to his name and we are already qualified.

Look for JB to start.

Again, its going to be a tight defensive affair... UAE has faster players than Qatar, but we saw against Bahrain that when the feed gets cut off, they can't transition the ball. The feed is Omar Abdulrahman. Almost definitely, Teymourian is going be tasked with defending against him 90 minutes with Neko behind him clearing balls.

If we force them wide like we did with Qatar today, we will have a good game as they are not good finishers of the ball in the air. Their strength is fast transition and moving the ball in the middle and quick passes. We need to stop that- like i said by having Ando cover Afro... and making professional fouls where possible.

We will have to depend on Dejagah and Sardar or Gucci to get a goal on the counter attacks. I predict another 1-0 win for Iran with the goal coming from a setpiece. The UAE defenders are very weak in the air.

[KeonKish]

First thing I noticed was that we started the game confidently this time, however qatar was defending very tightly and this frustrated us.
Qatar was using Muntari as a Kim shin wook and hoofed half the balls to him to bring down. This meant that Ghafouri was not free to move up much, in turn dejagah got swarmed by 3-4 players. By default this lead to less fluid attack.

Defense: PAG and Hosseini were great, Ghafouri shows great strength speed and stamina, however I did like him attacking more last game. (wasnt possible because of muntari). Pouladi was not at his best, looked tired and got beat by his man many times.

Midfield: Nekounam was amazing with his passes and ball movement today, one of his better performances in the last year, free kick was very poor however. Ando was everywhere today, he flattened out 3 or 4 Qataris on their faces, stopped many attacks, and started many attacks. He looks to be in much better shape. He always fights for every ball and that is how we got our goal. All 3 of our goals have been with his direct involvement. Shojaei made good passes, won us a good freekick, didnt loose the ball excessively. However he needs to give the ball away more quickly, also committed a stupid foul.

Forward Line: Hajsafi was active defensively but seemed to have a focus problem. Many times he failed or took a wrong step and didnt receive about 10 simple passes, he was also bad at attack today and ruined a counter attack by not taking the shot. Dejagah was good as usual but was swarmed by many defenders, great pass to Azmoun and good idea to take a shot at Burhan from the box.. Azmoun scored an amazing goal, and won many headers. However he needs to be more active on defense, he also needs to come back to receive the ball, he wanted through balls and unfortunately we dont have many players with that kind of touch. Gucci did everything right today except for his end product. His hustle was great, he started many counter attacks, but his shots were selfish, he had 2-4 players to pass too. Not to mention that his shots were weak and straight at the keeper.

Haghighi was alright, not his best game, didnt like his grassrolling at all. Although I will say qataris were being rough.

Ando MOTM for me, with nekounam and azmoun right behind.

PAG has a bright future... he has amazing hops and always causes danger in the box. He can also take a hit, he got hit like 5 or 6 times hard and still played his heart out.

I hope Azmoun can play against UAE. Gucci has never shown such poor descision making, I was upset.


I hope we start utilizing Jahanbakhsh, he is too good of a player to bench.


As I predicted, Irmatov was the best ref of the tournament so far, he didnt care much at all when qataris would drop like flies, and laughed at them sometimes, his calls were very accurate and he made minimal mistakes. Respect to Irmatov.


Although we started both halves with good attack, we need to get rid of this stupid habit once we are winning. We will get punished for sitting back.

We created a bunch of chances and just had an awful end product today. Even azmoun missed an easy goal earlier. We need to shoot or pass quickly, and not stop and give the opponents time to regroup. Overall Qatar clearly came at us hard, and we got the win. I understand CQS frustration but some of you make it seem like we were awful. Besides end product we did pretty well today, we have room for improvement, but we are passing and attacking much better than WCQ.

[Abtin]

Words from Dejagah after the match: http://footballitarin.com/video_page.php?id=13263

[Rumez]

haghighis confidence is becoming sort of negative. all the "alireza marry me" selfies and chants didnt do him any good...his performance was ok but he is showing a really annoying side of himself (after that bodycheck against fauzi aish, now today all this grassrolling and fake injury scenes...i dont know i have the feeling he likes the spot light on him.

I hope his confidence doesn't affect his performance negatively!

But if you have seen Abedzadeh play, you'd know he was very Foozool in the goal and would get physical with opponent players.
Confidence is very important for a keeper and he has to command his 6 yard box.
His confidence was over the top because he is from Abadan!!

[CHaMiLLionaire]

CQ's reaction when the game ended....


http://gfycat.com/LightRegalHarvestmouse