surprise, surprise ... CQ refuses to play Italy

[perspolis#1]

Besides, he's severely results oriented and would opt for the best team possible at any given time instead of focusing on bringing in steady flow of young prospects.

This is about a cowardly, self interested, despot who time and time again betrayed Iran when his personal interests and national interests crossed paths - sponsorgate, omidgate, iraqgate, friendlygate, etc. - finally over playing his hand. Tis a joyous occasion for me and I'm celebrating. I hated how Iran was playing, defending against the likes of bahrain, qatar, and U.A.E. I hated how he completely smeared Iran's name even further in the international community just before the WC by saying the kits shrink, Iran is poor, Iran is pathetic, Iranians can't even afford kits, etc. for a fistfull more of sponsor money. I hated his sycophantic appeal to the public. He had to go.

Describe the difference between a Despot and a mafia? Because you can be sure that the next coach(if Iranian) has a mafia. I don't think CQ brought down Iran's name at all. Since the WC, people who never knew about Iran's team have spoken to me about how we nearly brought the world cup finalists down to their knees. If you didn't pick up CQ's reasoning for defending so stringently after 5 years I can't help you. By putting your own team's reputation down, you get into the psyche of the other team. When Di Maria/Aguero/Messi have not scored on Iran for 60+ minutes they start to say in their heads "how is IRAN keeping us out?" and they start to mess up. It was bad luck/lack of good finishing that prevented us from stealing the game with a 1-0 park the bus. By bringing our reputation down, the commentators remembered our performance even more. He may have commented on Iran's lack of facility/funding but the only way to improve is by criticism.

What I bolded is exactly what has been wrong with Iranian football for the last 20+ years. Bringing in old names and the next world cup cycle we fail to qualify because our squad is washed out and old. I'd think any sane Iranian fan would not want Jabbari, Aghili, Rahmati back in TM but we aren't all sane now are we?

I'll make it clear that I have disagreed with CQ's choices before, and would welcome a better coach if we had a good alternative, but there is simply no one who could replace him at this time. Definitely not in Iran. Definitely not GN

[ashkan24]

Describe the difference between a Despot and a mafia? Because you can be sure that the next coach(if Iranian) has a mafia. I don't think CQ brought down Iran's name at all. Since the WC, people who never knew about Iran's team have spoken to me about how we nearly brought the world cup finalists down to their knees. If you didn't pick up CQ's reasoning for defending so stringently after 5 years I can't help you. By putting your own team's reputation down, you get into the psyche of the other team. When Di Maria/Aguero/Messi have not scored on Iran for 60+ minutes they start to say in their heads "how is IRAN keeping us out?" and they start to mess up. It was bad luck/lack of good finishing that prevented us from stealing the game with a 1-0 park the bus. By bringing our reputation down, the commentators remembered our performance even more. He may have commented on Iran's lack of facility/funding but the only way to improve is by criticism.
What I bolded is exactly what has been wrong with Iranian football for the last 20+ years. Bringing in old names and the next world cup cycle we fail to qualify because our squad is washed out and old. I'd think any sane Iranian fan would not want Jabbari, Aghili, Rahmati back in TM but we aren't all sane now are we?
I'll make it clear that I have disagreed with CQ's choices before, and would welcome a better coach if we had a good alternative, but there is simply no one who could replace him at this time. Definitely not in Iran. Definitely not GN

I'd argue CQ's "mafia" is far more corrosive and extensive than GN. CQ had the entire "popular" Iranian media - Navad being a good example - behind him, while GN has a bunch of minions at the stands. It's a false dichotomy. Iran played a rational and brilliant match against Argentina, no one is denying that. What I'm pointing out is the fact that Iran has been playing like every single team in-front of them is Argentina under CQ - with a handful of exceptions. That's all he knows. He's been using the same shit everywhere he's been. The argument that Iran doesn't have the necessary tools to play an expansive game is just as abhorrent, racist, irrational and close minded as you can get. Talent wise Iran is number one in Asia. And we have been one of the most consistent dominant teams in Asia for the last 50 years. For you to come out to defend CQ's persistent defensive play against Asian minnows answers your own question.

When I watch TM, I want to watch a beautiful free flowing football. Not 11 men behind the ball in their own half struggling to string together 5 passes before losing possession again. Damn near all of our goals under CQ were a product of free kicks or individual brilliance. And all of these things are apparent in the statistics he left behind.

1 point out of 9 in the WC in a relatively easy group. Compare our group with the US. And compare our individual players with US - practically MLS only and almost none of them good enough to play in Europe's top flight. Did Klinsmann bitch and moan about not having talented players or how their only option was to park the bus nonstop? WHO THE FUCK IS NIGERIA OR BOSNIA IN FOOTBALLING WORLD? How are you exactly defending our performance in the WC?

What about Asian Cup? After clenching pathetic straw victories via humiliating performances against qatar and u.a.e. we went on to lose to the mighty iraqi team. A country torn apart by war, sanctions and terrorists. I wonder how good their preparations were. Wonder how long they had their coach, wonder howmuch their coach bitched about their bombed pitches. Wonder howmuch their coach insisted to the international media that they're infact a "very shitty amateur team with no preparation" and he doesn't expect them to get out of the group. EVEN SHITTY AMATEUR TEAMS DON'T SAY THAT SHIT ABOUT THEIR OWN TEAMS!

Wake up man. CQ is an international con-man. Not a coach.

[PSGman#19]

we went on to lose to the mighty iraqi team. A country torn apart by war, sanctions and terrorists. I wonder how good their preparations were. Wonder how long they had their coach, wonder howmuch their coach bitched about their bombed pitches. Wonder howmuch their coach insisted to the international media that they're infact a "very shitty amateur team with no preparation" and he doesn't expect them to get out of the group. EVEN SHITTY AMATEUR TEAMS DON'T SAY THAT SHIT ABOUT THEIR OWN TEAMS!

Wake up man. CQ is an international con-man. Not a coach.

Bribbing the ref, with the complicity of AFC. this match was a true theft, and the rules that were applicated to Iran weren't football. I can understand you criticized CQ but speaking about this iraqgate to sh1t on our national team and staff is too much.

[perspolis#1]

When I watch TM, I want to watch a beautiful free flowing football. Not 11 men behind the ball in their own half struggling to string together 5 passes before losing possession again. Damn near all of our goals under CQ were a product of free kicks or individual brilliance. And all of these things are apparent in the statistics he left behind.
1 point out of 9 in the WC in a relatively easy group. Compare our group with the US. And compare our individual players with US - practically MLS only and almost none of them good enough to play in Europe's top flight. Did Klinsmann bitch and moan about not having talented players or how their only option was to park the bus nonstop? WHO THE FUCK IS NIGERIA OR BOSNIA IN FOOTBALLING WORLD? How are you exactly defending our performance in the WC?
What about Asian Cup? After clenching pathetic straw victories via humiliating performances against qatar and u.a.e. we went on to lose to the mighty iraqi team. A country torn apart by war, sanctions and terrorists. I wonder how good their preparations were. Wonder how long they had their coach, wonder howmuch their coach bitched about their bombed pitches. Wonder howmuch their coach insisted to the international media that they're infact a "very shitty amateur team with no preparation" and he doesn't expect them to get out of the group. EVEN SHITTY AMATEUR TEAMS DON'T SAY THAT SHIT ABOUT THEIR OWN TEAMS!
Wake up man. CQ is an international con-man. Not a coach.

You are deluded as to the difficulty of our World Cup Group. Nigeria were clearly somebody in World Football(at the time African Champs over Ghana/Ivory Coast/Egypt/Algeria) and Bosnia was more difficult for us to play than Nigeria was(Pjanic owned us). We also had the world cup finalists in our group. But lets continue.

CQ could use free flowing football, but free flowing football does not guarantee results. Japan plays free flowing football and they lost to UAE. CQ beat UAE however using his method.
And for the USA, its funny because at current strength I saw Bosnia to be a better team than Portugal(they sucked at WC) and Nigeria to be a better team than Ghana(also true). They also had a finalist(Germany). The USA has many aspects to their game that we do not. They have a far wider base of Expats who played for them(The German Americans) and they only agreed to come when Klinsmann called, not when Bob Bradley did or any US coach. That's very similar to how Dejagah did not come to us and neither did Gucci, until they saw a path of professionalism in Iranian football. Would they have come if a less recognized Iranian coach asked? Do you think we would be stronger or weaker without them?

If you saw the games that the US played you would also remember that the US parked the bus less effectively than Iran(USA has been parking the bus against stronger teams since 2002 era). USA's defense stood no chance for the likes of Germany/Belgium but they were lucky that they had a shotstopper in Tim Howard. Haghighi is great, but our last "Tim Howard" was Abedzadeh. Klinsmann left Donovan out and brought on Julian Green, who was nowhere near as well known but he ended up scoring vs. Belgium.

I do not belittle our accomplishments. We have more or less stayed the same level for the last 50 years, closer to the top/at the top at times, in Asia. Talentwise we have a love for the game that is unparalleled to any country in the world outside of the major footballing powers. But our downfall has always been planning and sometimes that needs foreign intervention to fix. There are professionals in Iran, but none of them are in power and we have no way to get them in power, and CQ was a shortcut to having "some" of it on TM. We have no guarantee of that now.

You'll see the point I'm trying to make when we get back to "oon goft, man goftam" khaleh zanak bazi that usually pervades Iranian domestic football, and favoritism/promises made from the new coach, whoever that may be.

[ashkan24]

Bribbing the ref, with the complicity of AFC. this match was a true theft, and the rules that were applicated to Iran weren't football. I can understand you criticized CQ but speaking about this iraqgate to sh1t on our national team and staff is too much.

I'm not gonna argue about "iraqgate" that would be counter productive but the fact remains, we lost to them. Plain and simple. And I love our national team, I'm not trying to shit on TM, I'm pointing you out to the person that has been consistently shitting on our national team, players, prospective talents, etc. to the international media without any backlash at home. CQ.

There's several hours of footage and thousands of interview accessible via simple google search of CQ shitting on TM.

You are deluded as to the difficulty of our World Cup Group. Nigeria were clearly somebody in World Football(at the time African Champs over Ghana/Ivory Coast/Egypt/Algeria) and Bosnia was more difficult for us to play than Nigeria was(Pjanic owned us). We also had the world cup finalists in our group. But lets continue.
CQ could use free flowing football, but free flowing football does not guarantee results. Japan plays free flowing football and they lost to UAE. CQ beat UAE however using his method.
And for the USA, its funny because at current strength I saw Bosnia to be a better team than Portugal(they sucked at WC) and Nigeria to be a better team than Ghana(also true). They also had a finalist(Germany). The USA has many aspects to their game that we do not. They have a far wider base of Expats who played for them(The German Americans) and they only agreed to come when Klinsmann called, not when Bob Bradley did or any US coach. That's very similar to how Dejagah did not come to us and neither did Gucci, until they saw a path of professionalism in Iranian football. Would they have come if a less recognized Iranian coach asked? Do you think we would be stronger or weaker without them?
If you saw the games that the US played you would also remember that the US parked the bus less effectively than Iran(USA has been parking the bus against stronger teams since 2002 era). USA's defense stood no chance for the likes of Germany/Belgium but they were lucky that they had a shotstopper in Tim Howard. Haghighi is great, but our last "Tim Howard" was Abedzadeh. Klinsmann left Donovan out and brought on Julian Green, who was nowhere near as well known but he ended up scoring vs. Belgium.
I do not belittle our accomplishments. We have more or less stayed the same level for the last 50 years, closer to the top/at the top at times, in Asia. Talentwise we have a love for the game that is unparalleled to any country in the world outside of the major footballing powers. But our downfall has always been planning and sometimes that needs foreign intervention to fix. There are professionals in Iran, but none of them are in power and we have no way to get them in power, and CQ was a shortcut to having "some" of it on TM. We have no guarantee of that now.
You'll see the point I'm trying to make when we get back to "oon goft, man goftam" khaleh zanak bazi that usually pervades Iranian domestic football, and favoritism/promises made from the new coach, whoever that may be.

Germany > Argentina
Portugal > Bosnia
Ghana >= Nigeria

I believe the vast majority of people would agree with that. My point is US went through a tougher group ahead of clear favorites for 2nd place - Portugal. Iran snoozed the world against Nigeria, played brilliantly - yet lost against Argentina, and completely capitulated in its most important game against Bosnia. That match was a tactical disaster. Everyone tries to push it under the rug, or run away from it. Wtf were they doing in that match? Defending while creating massive empty spaces for the bosnians to penetrate their defense? The formation looked like a CQ novelty: "defensive swiss cheese stance." Iran needed to ATTACK! Iran needed to WIN! Not sit back for counters!

Okay, so you want a "non-Iranian" professional coach right? Cause none of the Iranian coaches are "professional?" Cause, planning - whatever that means.

Did CQ "professional planning" got us to 1 point out 9 in the WC? Omg, Shouldn't we be kissing his ass right now for that one point? Afterall he's an african born man with superior portuguese ethnic background. OMG. Everytime I hear of portugal I tremble at the thought of how professional they are. And how advanced portugal is. And much more they know about this new wizardry that you call "planning" than us. What about the Asian Cup? Shouldn't we be kissing his ass for that too? We defeated mighty countries of bahrain, qatar, and u.a.e. and barely lost to iraq. We did great, didn't we? For a pathetic, illiterate, broke back, piss poor country that would be a great feat. But fortunately Iran isn't afghanestan. Think we can do a little better than that.

Have some respect and a little faith in your countrymen. If you had just said you wanted an internationally acclaimed coach then I would have agreed with you but "iranians can't plan" argument is really just a sad, sad state of mind. I wanna hug you right now. *pat*

[perspolis#1]

Have some respect and a little faith in your countrymen. If you had just said you wanted an internationally acclaimed coach then I would have agreed with you but "iranians can't plan" argument is really just a sad, sad state of mind. I wanna hug you right now. *pat*

I have the utmost faith that under the proper guidance, our countrymen can produce a team that can beat any team in the world. The ONLY thing that has prevented us from that goal is a lack of planning/foresight by the IFF. As I said in my previous post, there are professsionals in Iran, but none of them are able to actually do something productive for our football because they are marginalized, by cronies/government people. The consequences they face are worse than what a foreign coach does. IFF would have fired CQ a long time ago, if it didnt look suspicious, that he was calling their faults out.

Notice how we can spit out Volleyball teams/Basketball teams that break headlines but our football team does not. This is because our team is held back by politics/partybazi that will only get worse with the crop of coaches we have NOW in Iran. I believe Hashemian/Nekounam/Mansourian have the potential to be great coaches if they all commit to wanting to be a TM coach one day. None of them are ready now.

CQ has faults, and he messed up big time against Bosnia. Our team morale was low and he told them to defend and our players were desperate to score. Not a good combo. I'm less of a supporter of CQ and more of a supporter of team discipline. Right now, what TM needs is a coach to maintain the team discipline before anything else, and yes I'll agree that this coach can help revive our attacking game somewhat. If we lose the positional awareness, defensive prowess we learned in the process of shifting to attack, we would be back where we started 7 years ago.

Can we agree that the smoothest process forward is a coach to take our newly found defensive strength to be converted into a swift counterattacking team, maybe even like Chelsea/Real. What constitutes entertaining football for you? Tiki Taka?

[PSGman#19]

I'm not gonna argue about "iraqgate" that would be counter productive but the fact remains, we lost to them. Plain and simple. And I love our national team, I'm not trying to shit on TM, I'm pointing you out to the person that has been consistently shitting on our national team, players, prospective talents, etc. to the international media without any backlash at home. CQ.
There's several hours of footage and thousands of interview accessible via simple google search of CQ shitting on TM.
Germany > Argentina
Portugal > Bosnia
Ghana >= Nigeria
I believe the vast majority of people would agree with that. My point is US went through a tougher group ahead of clear favorites for 2nd place - Portugal. Iran snoozed the world against Nigeria, played brilliantly - yet lost against Argentina, and completely capitulated in its most important game against Bosnia. That match was a tactical disaster. Everyone tries to push it under the rug, or run away from it. Wtf were they doing in that match? Defending while creating massive empty spaces for the bosnians to penetrate their defense? The formation looked like a CQ novelty: "defensive swiss cheese stance." Iran needed to ATTACK! Iran needed to WIN! Not sit back for counters!
Okay, so you want a "non-Iranian" professional coach right? Cause none of the Iranian coaches are "professional?" Cause, planning - whatever that means.
Did CQ "professional planning" got us to 1 point out 9 in the WC? Omg, Shouldn't we be kissing his ass right now for that one point? Afterall he's an african born man with superior portuguese ethnic background. OMG. Everytime I hear of portugal I tremble at the thought of how professional they are. And how advanced portugal is. And much more they know about this new wizardry that you call "planning" than us. What about the Asian Cup? Shouldn't we be kissing his ass for that too? We defeated mighty countries of bahrain, qatar, and u.a.e. and barely lost to iraq. We did great, didn't we? For a pathetic, illiterate, broke back, piss poor country that would be a great feat. But fortunately Iran isn't afghanestan. Think we can do a little better than that.
Have some respect and a little faith in your countrymen. If you had just said you wanted an internationally acclaimed coach then I would have agreed with you but "iranians can't plan" argument is really just a sad, sad state of mind. I wanna hug you right now. *pat*

You are right, the fact remains. We drew against Iraq at 10 against 12 with a fake red card at the beginning of the game, a penalty against us and we drew twice in extra time. I am not fan of CQ sacrosaint defensive tactic and putting Iran in the wrong side of medias with intern dispute every time a big positive event approach (WC, Sweden and Chile friendlies).

But using the so called Iraq game is dishonest (if we can still call that a football game).

PS : yeah US group was tougher but US team is better than Iran, with a good headcoach, a league under the spotlight with some ex world stars, plenty of good friendlies, no sanctions, some good legionnaires. Don't compare apples with oranges

[PersianLegion]

You are right, the fact remains. We drew against Iraq at 10 against 12 with a fake red card at the beginning of the game, a penalty against us and we drew twice in extra time. I am not fan of CQ sacrosaint defensive tactic and putting Iran in the wrong side of medias with intern dispute every time a big positive event approach (WC, Sweden and Chile friendlies).
But using the so called Iraq game is dishonest (if we can still call that a football game).
PS : yeah US group was tougher but US team is better than Iran, with a good headcoach, a league under the spotlight with some ex world stars, plenty of good friendlies, no sanctions, some good legionnaires. Don't compare apples with oranges

Did you forget USA lack of funds and several friendly games and camps that American team canceled? How dare you to compare American team with us? We had literary showering TM with our oil money that they got lazy and fat .... and did bad during their thousands of friendly games with Brazil, Germany, France, Argentine and so...

[ashkan24]

I have the utmost faith that under the proper guidance, our countrymen can produce a team that can beat any team in the world. The ONLY thing that has prevented us from that goal is a lack of planning/foresight by the IFF. As I said in my previous post, there are professsionals in Iran, but none of them are able to actually do something productive for our football because they are marginalized, by cronies/government people. The consequences they face are worse than what a foreign coach does. IFF would have fired CQ a long time ago, if it didnt look suspicious, that he was calling their faults out.

Notice how we can spit out Volleyball teams/Basketball teams that break headlines but our football team does not. This is because our team is held back by politics/partybazi that will only get worse with the crop of coaches we have NOW in Iran. I believe Hashemian/Nekounam/Mansourian have the potential to be great coaches if they all commit to wanting to be a TM coach one day. None of them are ready now.

CQ has faults, and he messed up big time against Bosnia. Our team morale was low and he told them to defend and our players were desperate to score. Not a good combo. I'm less of a supporter of CQ and more of a supporter of team discipline. Right now, what TM needs is a coach to maintain the team discipline before anything else, and yes I'll agree that this coach can help revive our attacking game somewhat. If we lose the positional awareness, defensive prowess we learned in the process of shifting to attack, we would be back where we started 7 years ago.

Can we agree that the smoothest process forward is a coach to take our newly found defensive strength to be converted into a swift counterattacking team, maybe even like Chelsea/Real. What constitutes entertaining football for you? Tiki Taka?

Well, now you've completely changed the direction of the conversation from TM's head coach's ability to manage the team to long term strategic ambitions of the IFF which goes directly back to IR. IR is a hybrid of islamist sharia and a hush communism entity actively suppressing free enterprises from growth due to their religious restrictions - women in stadiums - or even monetary gains - TV rights for IPL, TM, etc. Not to mention the fact that the government is in charge of all the infrastructure planning/building, in other words IRGC vis a vis nepotism, theft, and a complete disregard for quality control and meeting deadlines which has resulted in cases such as Naghshe Jahan stadium being under construction for more than 2 decades.

You wanna bash IR? Be my guest, I'll join you. Fact is IR isn't the head coach of TM. CQ is. And he as a coach has employed a single, solitary tactic for TM irrespective of the level of opposition - ranging from Argentina to Qatar. Defending deep without the ball and relying on long balls. He did the same thing with Portugal in the '10 WC. Portugal sucks too? They lack quality players too? Ronaldo is shit, ain't he? And they also played shitty teams before the WC - hence the preparation excuse. He directly asks and insists upon playing against shitty teams for preparation and then says he had a shitty preparation to the media. Refusing to play Chile before the WC is just one example that we're made aware of who knows howmany other teams he turned down without our knowledge.

This strategy of defending deep without the ball in your own half should only be deployed as a last resort against HEAVY FAVORITES - Germany, Argentina, Netherlands. Otherwise, you should play normal football, specially if you're behind or tied and in need of a goal. Pressing the opponent in their own half, man to man, forcing errors, possession, strategic possession that means the ability to string together a bunch of consecutive passes while slowly advancing forward deploying a coherent attacking formation - relying on Ando to dispossess someone and sending a hail marry or a through ball isn't called attacking formation. In other words, I'm not even a fan of how TM defends and CQ didn't bring this to Iran. Ghotbi did. Iran played the exact same way against Korea in '11 Asian Cup and we got scored on exactly the same way we got scored on against Argentina.

I like attacking football, it means transitioning to defensive stance after being dispossessed starts in the opponent's half not our own vis a vis pressure.

[IranPowned]

Well, now you've completely changed the direction of the conversation from TM's head coach's ability to manage the team to long term strategic ambitions of the IFF which goes directly back to IR. IR is a hybrid of islamist sharia and a hush communism entity actively suppressing free enterprises from growth due to their religious restrictions - women in stadiums - or even monetary gains - TV rights for IPL, TM, etc. Not to mention the fact that the government is in charge of all the infrastructure planning/building, in other words IRGC vis a vis nepotism, theft, and a complete disregard for quality control and meeting deadlines which has resulted in cases such as Naghshe Jahan stadium being under construction for more than 2 decades.

You wanna bash IR? Be my guest, I'll join you. Fact is IR isn't the head coach of TM. CQ is. And he as a coach has employed a single, solitary tactic for TM irrespective of the level of opposition - ranging from Argentina to Qatar. Defending deep without the ball and relying on long balls. He did the same thing with Portugal in the '10 WC. Portugal sucks too? They lack quality players too? Ronaldo is shit, ain't he? And they also played shitty teams before the WC - hence the preparation excuse. He directly asks and insists upon playing against shitty teams for preparation and then says he had a shitty preparation to the media. Refusing to play Chile before the WC is just one example that we're made aware of who knows howmany other teams he turned down without our knowledge.

This strategy of defending deep without the ball in your own half should only be deployed as a last resort against HEAVY FAVORITES - Germany, Argentina, Netherlands. Otherwise, you should play normal football, specially if you're behind or tied and in need of a goal. Pressing the opponent in their own half, man to man, forcing errors, possession, strategic possession that means the ability to string together a bunch of consecutive passes while slowly advancing forward deploying a coherent attacking formation - relying on Ando to dispossess someone and sending a hail marry or a through ball isn't called attacking formation. In other words, I'm not even a fan of how TM defends and CQ didn't bring this to Iran. Ghotbi did. Iran played the exact same way against Korea in '11 Asian Cup and we got scored on exactly the same way we got scored on against Argentina.

I like attacking football, it means transitioning to defensive stance after being dispossessed starts in the opponent's half not our own vis a vis pressure.

Afarin ashkan24, you are new here and I love your posts. Your posts are much more quality then those of others here.

[O-ZoNe]

All of them. As you are not a respectable coach before you're fully cognizant of the majesty and unparallelled gheyrat of TM. #fact

You and rugs need to get together. You can argue how respectable a coach must be while he can discuss how professional a coach must be to know anything about football. The rest of us can twiddle our thumbs :P

[perspolis#1]

You wanna bash IR? Be my guest, I'll join you. Fact is IR isn't the head coach of TM. CQ is. And he as a coach has employed a single, solitary tactic for TM irrespective of the level of opposition - ranging from Argentina to Qatar. Defending deep without the ball and relying on long balls. He did the same thing with Portugal in the '10 WC. Portugal sucks too? They lack quality players too? Ronaldo is shit, ain't he? And they also played shitty teams before the WC - hence the preparation excuse. He directly asks and insists upon playing against shitty teams for preparation and then says he had a shitty preparation to the media. Refusing to play Chile before the WC is just one example that we're made aware of who knows howmany other teams he turned down without our knowledge.

This strategy of defending deep without the ball in your own half should only be deployed as a last resort against HEAVY FAVORITES - Germany, Argentina, Netherlands. Otherwise, you should play normal football, specially if you're behind or tied and in need of a goal. Pressing the opponent in their own half, man to man, forcing errors, possession, strategic possession that means the ability to string together a bunch of consecutive passes while slowly advancing forward deploying a coherent attacking formation - relying on Ando to dispossess someone and sending a hail marry or a through ball isn't called attacking formation. In other words, I'm not even a fan of how TM defends and CQ didn't bring this to Iran. Ghotbi did. Iran played the exact same way against Korea in '11 Asian Cup and we got scored on exactly the same way we got scored on against Argentin

I like attacking football, it means transitioning to defensive stance after being dispossessed starts in the opponent's half not our own vis a vis pressure.

I like attacking football too, since I play CAM I originally entered this coversation with you to show that CQ was the best option to get us to the WC. I dont mind the change and personally believe we should have a new coach until we win a title/advance to the R16. CQ had commented on our players too harshly but there was essence to discussing why we could not play our form of attacking football from the early 2000's. We still lack a target striker like a Daei. We lack a pacy CAM. Shojaei is too slow for world football. . CQ failed to implement a system that would have worked if Gucci was a taller player to hold the ball up, and our DMs could move around more. Truth is, Nekounam's best asset is marking/cutting down passing lanes and Ando's is breaking up plays.

The style of attacking football you are advocating has never existed continously in our football and needs a whole different discussion as to how we take steps to change Irans football culture. As much as you might hate this, it may need us to bring in academy coaches to our youth leagues from abroad to change the entire fabric of play in Iran. Similar to how UAE went from 'aliasghari' football to being a soft Japan.

This is getting to be an overdrawn debate, but I can apprecieate you have some valid points and at least reason unlike actual CQ haters. The questions remaining to be answered: Will we still have friendlies of a high caliber after this world cup/Sweden/Chile, can we transition our team to play the football that doesnt give us heart attacks but also gets results.

I was upset at CQ resigning but didnt have the doomsday mentality. Our next coach needs to build our team around our technical players first. Then with Aerual monsters like PAG, we have a far higher chance of scoring. If theres anything CQ should leave behind in Iran for us to lesrn, its the physicsl regimen/exercises. A fit team can hold any team if they work hard enough.