Ok, thats enough! I'm going to piss in the Punchbowl

[Ardalan]

1. Agar CQ bemoone ba barnaameye pish khahim raft va padidehaaye jadidi khahim diid.

2. Agar az in be pas betonim baazihaaye doostaaneye dorost o hesabi daashte baashim, goore pedare baazie dostaane baa Sorie o Felestin o teamhaaye arabie khavar miyaaneh.

3. Agar chandta bazikone digaremoon beran Europa.

In Team khaahad roosht kard va be jaame jahani mirim. Shak nakonid.

[Martin-Reza]

I don't think anyone is disputing the pk.

[Yazdani]

I don't post much but read forums constantly. Just wanted to add my 2 cents......

Iran's flopping was embarrassing. We always complain about Arabs flopping (which they do) and when we play the one Arab team that doesn't we start flopping!

There were a lot of mistakes....Pouladi's "foul" on Iraq keeper and not getting up afterwards was stupid. While his punishment was BS he should have known better already having a yellow card.

Pouraliganji's foul in the box was BAD. He didn't even get a piece of the ball at all!

Iran showed real ghayrat by making it 3-3 with 10 but we lost in the shootout fair and square

All this being said the game would have never got to that point without William's BS call! Iran was in complete control before Pouladi being sent off!

Iran losing like this and UAE beating Japan has put me in a depression.......I half expected the sun to not come up this morning!

[Ghomarbaaz]

C.Q. could not do much about Pooladi's mistake or Pouraliganji,
But I blame him for letting Haghighi take the penlaties, we have better goalies for penalties in Iran, and national team of any country should represent it's best... Haghighi missed every single one... There is nothing wrong with subbing the goalies right before shoot out... Holand did it in WC and does not take away from the starting goalie... He should have added Taleblou to TM just for this purpose, he is the best Penalty taker we have in Iran hands down... or even without Taleblou, he should have subbed Beyranvand... not sure why he is so stuck on Haghighi!

[OFFSIDE_1]

we deserved the loss because we played without gheyrat MOST of the match...we go up 1-0 and decide to slow the game down and finish it that way for 75 min. left. we didnt kick it into high gear and play with gheyrat til we went down 2-1

truly disappointing how we approached this game

ref mistakes aside, we GAVE this game away to them on a silver platter

Most means majority of the minutes, so if you combine the 5+ minutes before the first half and 45+ minutes in the 2nd half and 30+ minutes in injury time, those are all the minutes we played while down by 1 player. So, your math is way off, unless you truly believe we played without "gheyrat" during the time we were down 1 player.

Also, please tell us what your definition of "gheyrat" is .... we all like to know

[OFFSIDE_1]

C.Q. could not do much about Pooladi's mistake or Pouraliganji,
But I blame him for letting Haghighi take the penlaties, we have better goalies for penalties in Iran, and national team of any country should represent it's best... Haghighi missed every single one... There is nothing wrong with subbing the goalies right before shoot out... Holand did it in WC and does not take away from the starting goalie... He should have added Taleblou to TM just for this purpose, he is the best Penalty taker we have in Iran hands down... or even without Taleblou, he should have subbed Beyranvand... not sure why he is so stuck on Haghighi!

we already had done 3 substitutes ..... how would you have proposed he swap out Haghighi?

[Farhad21]

...and who the hell is the bad luck #13 amiri?

[tufun]

At all i think the second yellow card was very hard decision but legal.
maybe he did not know pouladi was already booked.
Mistake and wrong decision by ref its part of football, and will happen always.
We could keep looking for the second goal and not switching early to total defensive mode.
Tm did have couple comebacks into the game but we was just trying reach the lottery pk.
Lets be realistic a good fighting team with bus parking tactic and some lucky free kick or corner goals is not enough to win a tournament.

If you want the cup u have to destroy you opponent , like germany did at the wc.
Why we cant play 90 min offensive football against shity small arab teams without parking the bus?
Why we play without a playmaker and only using one Forward?
We did not deserve win the cup.

[Abtin]

that is simply the problem with this team. they settle with a 1-0. They remember to PUSH forward and try to score goals when they are under preassure in the last 10-15 minutes. it hurts SOOOO bad because it was Iraq, had it been Japan we could understand. How come we could score against SK with 10 men, but not against this team when there was such a long time to get the job done? we wanted to become 1st in group to avoid Japan, we had the easiest road to the final. Simply how a team could make such mistakes on that level, and choke against that team (spare me for the 10 man excuses), is simply not to understand.

I needed this joy more than ANYTHING, my life the past months have been TM and breathing for them, i couldn't think about ANYTHING else than TM! Az khoda joz in khoshbakhti chizi nakhastam..

[metallica69]

Bro, we have all been there, I have been around to see many TM games and I know how you feel.

Going down 10 men should not be our excuse, CQ chocked after the sending off and his tactic and subs were all wrong.

[Doctor DOOM]

Well, as long as we're picking on our mistakes and errors, ...

- haghighi's keeping in their first goal was abysmal. Allowing a ball from near and almost CLOSED angle?

-So much for airtight and impenetrable defense! The defense was in shambles the moment they were put under stress n pressure!
You can't judge it when you're facing Palestine and Kuwait and ... . You assess it against teams that are able to pressure you.

- the pick of penalty takers.

- Perhaps surrendering the ball to such extent to your opponent, when your defense isn't exactly fool proof and is untested, may finally backfire. Especially when you've lost a defender.

- we already started the game one man short - shojaei??? Really?? When is this chap retiring? Please do. And do SOON.

And a few more, for later

[ameri]

Pooladi's over reaction and acting was what earned him the card!! we don't need to be doing that shit!

FFS a ref cannot wait 2 seconds after pooladi is hit in the chest and give a card for time wasting! IN EVERY EFFING Game where a player attempts to waste time by being hurt, they bring in the meds and take him to the sidelines. Pooladi was already in the sidelines so there is no reason the ref should accuse him of timing wasting when they can simply continue the game while the meds "treat" Pooladi!!!

[eerooni]

Here are the Facts: Ben Williams ( with AFCs consent)wanted to Throw out Iran's game in favor of Iraq and found the perfect reason in Pouladi, so when you haphazardly and wrongly red card a player in a team that's winning and dominating, you destroy solid fair played football and you crush the teams hope. We were the clear winners and once again, a snot nosed redneck ref destroyed our game and stole our trophy. Nothing more , nothing less!

[Go_Daei]

so this ref pulls red cards from his arse.. noted!

Football needs different measures for expelling a player so teams don't suffer at the hand of a fvcked up ref.. 10 min sit out at the most on this bullshit call..

[IranFootball10]

Ok so there's so many random and emotional threads opened after the match, I guess this one is at least trying to make sense of things, so I'll post my opinion here.

About the goals we conceded, all 3 of them were terrible mistakes. The first being Haghighi mixing up with Pouraligangi, then conceding a pass into the goal from such a tight angle. Second was weak defending at the back post, something we have had problems with for ages, yet even CQ the defensive mastermind according to people here could not address. And finally a childish and obvious penalty conceded in the end.

Obviously both yellows leading to Pouladi's sending off were extremely harsh and was just bad refereeing. However, after the red card, CQ's tactic were completely wrong. We were playing relatively better in the first half than our previous 3 matches, and despite this, we decided to sit back and defend for the next 45 minutes, hoping to hold on to the 1-0 lead. If we were playing Japan or South Korea, it would have been understandable since those higher caliber teams would have been able to make use of their numerical advantage. But against Iraq, it was a complete mistake to concede possession and just pile the pressure on. Iraq did not stand a chance even against our 10 men if we did not allow them to have so much of the ball when our players were bound to make a mistake. So much for everyone here praising CQ's defensive discipline implemented in TM, the one time we needed it to work, he desperately failed. Had we played like the first half albeit with more caution, I'm sure Benjamin Williams would've eventually called a penalty for us to make up (as refs often do) and we would have probably cruised to a 2-0 win.

Finally, after conceding, again it showed that we have NO plan when in attack and when we are in need of a goal, even if we were with 10 men. At that point we were pretty much playing for penalties.

And in penalties, the choice of penalty takers was a curious one. Usually the best taker takes the first or last one (out of the first 5); the idea being to give morale to the team to start the penalties well or to have a calm head to finish the game off. Why Hajsafi took the first one and Nekounam took the 3rd one, I have no idea. Also, why Gucci did not step up to take one and putting the inexperienced Amiri under pressure is another question that remains to be unanswered. Finally, having center backs Pouraligangi and Hosseini take penalties was a risk, the fortunately paid off but could have ended terribly.

All in all, yes the refereeing was horrendous in the red card but in the end result, we only have ourselves to blame for, so instead of all this AFC, Arabs, Australian ref nonsense, I hope we can look to the future with a new president of IFF who can build a good team for WCQ and bring in a proper coach from Spain or Germany who is willing to trust in the abilities of our players to play a good style of football, with planning and tactics for both the defensive and attacking aspect of the game.