Post-Match Sweden-Iran

[Shah Abbas]

Disappointing game from TM. All Qatari player$ were off, Ando had a shocking game for his standards. We were weak defensively in general, in the air, and once Sweden started sitting back and counter-attacking, we lacked sharpness, couldn't keep the ball or string passes. Only couple of good plays that unfortunately did not lead us anywhere.

Our best player was a "shitty" IPL player again, Amiri and our worst was Dejagah with no contest, he was dreadful. The only real positive is that I'm pretty sure we found our fix RB for the years to come, Ghafouri is pretty amazing in all departments.

I think the great fans deserved much better.

You're absolutely correct.
+ I hate it how some people hate on IPL players calling them unprofessional and rubbish. Most IPL players play with gheirat and run till that last minute. Look at Amiri.

[football.club]

Hashem is too slow (jogging speed), I cant understand why he is selected for TM.
Masoud was trying at least
Dejagah: In the first half he was okey, but in the second half he completely disappeared
Gucci: Did he even touch the ball? I did not even see him once.

This game reminded me of the Bosnia game:
- Playing with no concentration: easy misstakes etc
- More open
- Offensive
When TM play like this we can see the real level of our football, the realistic picture.
We should've played like we did against Chile (Close down everything, parking the bus. Because that is our best chance against European teams).

So CQ park the bus against Iraq and decides to play open and offensive football against Bosnia and Sweden. Why I dont understand?
And obviously he is afraid of changing his starting eleven even though all the players are walking after 60minutes.
But we thank him and his staff for this wonderful time, because from now on everything will go down (probably they will promote Khakpour to senior TM, or a clown like Majid Jalali)


Alot of old players in TM must be replaced before the WCQ, but after seeing U-23 today im not very hopeful about this generation shift

[DireStraits]

Sweden could have scored 3 more goals. They were too good today. We should learn more about their positioning and combinational play.
Since they have a good star they play combinationa until he gets a chance. Always too many swedish player around. Too good for us.

". half bot teams were testing their new player. Only 1. half was for real.

[Afat11]

Hashem is too slow (jogging speed), I cant understand why he is selected for TM.
Masoud was trying at least
Dejagah: In the first half he was okey, but in the second half he completely disappeared
Gucci: Did he even touch the ball? I did not even see him once.

This game reminded me of the Bosnia game:
- Playing with no concentration: easy misstakes etc
- More open
- Offensive
When TM play like this we can see the real level of our football, the realistic picture.
We should've played like we did against Chile (Close down everything, parking the bus. Because that is our best chance against European teams).

So CQ park the bus against Iraq and decides to play open and offensive football against Bosnia and Sweden. Why I dont understand?
And obviously he is afraid of changing his starting eleven even though all the players are walking after 60minutes.
But we thank him and his staff for this wonderful time, because from now on everything will go down (probably they will promote Khakpour to senior TM, or a clown like Majid Jalali)


Alot of old players in TM must be replaced before the WCQ, but after seeing U-23 today im not very hopeful about this generation shift

You're mistaken, we never parked the bus against Iraq. Our defense is just more organized against those teams. It's a Chicken before the egg scenario here. We did not play offensive football against Sweden or Bosnia on purpose, we did so because we were scored on early in both games.

If we could have maintained a tie, the game would have been similar to all of our games. Defend in an organized and compact way, then quickly spread out and counter, then compact, then counter, and keep doing so. We did this against Argentina, Chile, Iraq, Qatar, everyone.

The problem is, we have trouble with tough and tall players. We lose our equilibrium, because we are used to winning all of the airballs, so our defenders lose their focus and compact positioning and we concede.

Don't lie to yourself and say we were ultra-attacking mentality from minute-1. Our tactic only changed after we conceded one early. We were not ever going to have an easy time winning this game.

We struggle in games against tall-strong Euro teams. Our history has shown it. This is something we need to work on in the long run, and find players that can neutralize the tall players. To be honest a guy like Aghili in his prime might have been useful today. Pouraligangi and Hosseini weren't strong or tall enough. They were being man-handled and tired out.

Our strength is in clearing the ball and striking on the counter. We looked weak today because we had so many problems clearing the ball.

Again, it doesn't make us or CQ bad, despite all of the haters jumping out of their caves to point the finger at CQ.

The problem is that our current players that were at CQ's disposal were not matched well to our opposition.

We should learn from this loss as all other teams do in "friendly" matches.

[Wahid Dejagah]

For me the defence apart from Hosseini was very bad today, especially Montazeri who's been deteriorating since day one he joined Umm-Kir. Hosseini was a beast and the frustration with having to cover numerous times for other peoples' mistakes was clear as broad daylight.

Midfield wise Nekou wasn't good at all but second half Ando bossed the game. As an avid Dejagah fan I unfortinately have to admit he's been deteriorating signifcantly too, but on the other hand Amiri shined yet again after a shaky start. Also, as a Shojaei critic he was super today, something I haven't said for as long as I can remember!! Well done to them!

Reza was quiet as well but is the usual Kaneh we expect, and SA was missed although his form with Omid isn't anything to write home to as well.

Lastly, both today and against Chile Haghighi looked EXTREMELY nervous/scared which even affected simple exits from goal...

I honestly hope CQ can stay though. He's been proving TM isn't ONLY about parking a double decker- although the main part of it is on a serious note the pressing seen in both games was a major plus.

Don't think having SA and JB would've changed much because mainly CQ doesn't count on JB and the likelihood is he'd be an 80th minute sub and SA (although don't get me wrong is very talented) was clearly lookong complacent and unmotivated with Omid.

[Surenas]

I quote myself

After all it was a decent game, Iran played well, we should not forget

1. Azmoun and JB were really missing in this game, especially if Dejagah got such a poor day.
2. Sweden is physically much better and they're much taller, usually we Iranians are tall among Asians and South Americans, but in Europe, we lose this advantage.
3. Dudes, we played in Sweden, it's not easy to play there, especially as Iranian, we never leave our country lol.
4. You almost felt the fear of the Iranian players from the start, for Iran it was an important game, it was in Europe, it was for our Coach and we never play in so professional Stadiums, it felt like a WC for the Iranians, and for the Swedishs it was like tuesday.

After all it was a nice game, Iran did it well 3-1 is a bit too high, 2-1 would be ok.

[Bi-honar]

It's obviously not a great result, but I don't think overall it was bad game from TM and it was definitely entertaining. After all it was just a friendly and that's where you're supposed to figure out your weaknesses.

Speaking of which, our defense has got used to having full support from our midfielders and they obviously need to learn to be a lot more efficient with this open more offensive style of play.

As I said in the game thread, Hosseini, Montazeri and Beik all needed to mark their men better and that's really what made the difference on the scoreline today. And the one time that both Montazeri and Hosseini did have their man marked, neither one even went up for the header (3rd goal).

Overall, I would have liked to see more pressing in the 2nd half like we did in the 1st, but they had a lot more subs a lot earlier and you could tell the boys were getting more and more tired as the game went on.

Sweden also played a very organized tight game at the back, so in the long run we have to learn to break those types of defenses down and this was a good game to show us what we need to work on.

I still do think we need a generational change though and taking the focus of the Qatar league and putting it back on IPL would hopefully make our players think twice before going there - I can't really say any of them have improved by doing so.

On a funnier note and to lighten the mood, I had the right prediction, just the wrong game!

[Iman_Joon]

Disgusting afghani guys with swedish flags shanting soed chikaresh mikone sorakh sorakhes mikone.... after the game outside

[khodam]

3-1 is a very typical scenario for games when a team is behind by 1 goal and really wants to tie the game. A late goal is a risk that the trailing team accepts. All together, I through TM played really well despite its obvious lack of quality strikers.

[football.club]

You're mistaken, we never parked the bus against Iraq. Our defense is just more organized against those teams. It's a Chicken before the egg scenario here. We did not play offensive football against Sweden or Bosnia on purpose, we did so because we were scored on early in both games.

If we could have maintained a tie, the game would have been similar to all of our games. Defend in an organized and compact way, then quickly spread out and counter, then compact, then counter, and keep doing so. We did this against Argentina, Chile, Iraq, Qatar, everyone.

The problem is, we have trouble with tough and tall players. We lose our equilibrium, because we are used to winning all of the airballs, so our defenders lose their focus and compact positioning and we concede.

Don't lie to yourself and say we were ultra-attacking mentality from minute-1. Our tactic only changed after we conceded one early. We were not ever going to have an easy time winning this game.

We struggle in games against tall-strong Euro teams. Our history has shown it. This is something we need to work on in the long run, and find players that can neutralize the tall players. To be honest a guy like Aghili in his prime might have been useful today. Pouraligangi and Hosseini weren't strong or tall enough. They were being man-handled and tired out.

Our strength is in clearing the ball and striking on the counter. We looked weak today because we had so many problems clearing the ball.

Again, it doesn't make us or CQ bad, despite all of the haters jumping out of their caves to point the finger at CQ.

The problem is that our current players that were at CQ's disposal were not matched well to our opposition.

We should learn from this loss as all other teams do in "friendly" matches.

Watch the first 20 minutes of the game again, and compare it to Chile! Today there were no positioning just running around in circles. Look at the space between the defense line and the midfielders. In some cases TM was defending with less than 4-5 players because the rest of the players did not contribute to the compact defense we are always used to see.

[O-ZoNe]

The only player who really disappointed me today was Ashkan Dejagah.

You can clearly see the impact of playing at Al-Arabi in the Qatari Stars League.

Invisible, slow, lazy, sloppy and every pass led to a turn-over. I want Jahanbakhsh to start over him next time.

Yet in the chile game he was in beast mode, best player, noosheh joonesh he went to qatar as long as he keeps this up...guys, perhaps you are reading too much into both friendlies. The Chile game was not our best TM performance ever, and this is Sweden game is not the death of us either. Everyone is over-reacting...

[football.club]

Disgusting afghani guys with swedish flags shanting soed chikaresh mikone sorakh sorakhes mikone.... after the game outside

They are bikhar, they have nothing else to do apart from being annoying.

[Kiarash]

Disgusting afghani guys with swedish flags shanting soed chikaresh mikone sorakh sorakhes mikone.... after the game outside

At least we have a football team.

[saadat_abad]

i dont agree with some when they say Haghighi was not at fault. on the first goal 100% Haghs fault. when the ball was played to the left hand side he went more outwards to the left, then the ball was crossed to the far post on the right side where he was then out of position. second goal, not his fault as it was a open shot taken very well. 3rd goal also his fault. when the cross was played he came out a bit then realized he could not get to the ball which then was out positioned and could not make the dive to save the header that was going to the left side of our net. he is a ok keeper but had a bad day today. his form has dropped a bit tho.

[ArminSh]

I'm proud of our boys - Its unrealistic and unfair to expect a win against Sweden. They knew we beat Chile so they gave it all to us. Could have been 3-2 if Guccis clever shot would have been in instead of hitting the side bar.

However, Couple thing that bothered me a lot is the amount of turnovers in middle of the field. That is horrible place to give the ball away as defenders are pushing forward and can easily be surprised by any counter attack. Masoud and Amiri did give the ball away in our half few times at least. Secondly, i noticed we turn towards our half alot when we cant find a player thus helping the Swedish forwards push foward and win the ball back. That bothered me alot because we gave the ball away doing those little turns.

Overall, Good game and again proud of our boys. If we were focused bit more we could have kept it at 2-1 which is a very respectable result for our team.