Iran's Journey to Russia... The Cheetahs Leave the Tigers Feeling Blue!

[Bi-honar]

Hi guys,

Latest article is now on the front page: http://www.persianfootball.com/news/...ng-blue-video/

It includes highlights of the match with Indian commentators (quite funny to watch) - special thanks to Abtin for that post

Also included for the 1st time (and hopefully in the future) "PFDC Player Ratings" which is an average of all the valid ratings (1 to 10) from the PFDC community from the Player Marks thread - so thank you everyone who contributed in that thread.

I also tried to use as much of the comments from the match thread as I could for the mood of the article.

Please feel free to discuss the article here or anything about the match really (since we don't seem to have post match discussion threads any more).

[aenima_8]

Fantastic! Thank you Behrou!

[Team Melli Fan]

Love your articles. I like the average player ratings

[TheBoss]

quality article, thanks Bi-honar.

[Kavian]

This "Cheetah" imprint was meant to be just a one time thing for World Cup event, to bring awareness for this endangered animal in Iran. Now thank to a large inventory of made-in-Bangladesh cheap Iranian national team jersey, the "Cheetah" has become a permanent fixture on the jersies and has lost its true purpose. This is not a symbol for Iran.

[mahestan]

This "Cheetah" imprint was meant to be just a one time thing for World Cup event, to bring awareness for this endangered animal in Iran. Now thank to a large inventory of made-in-Bangladesh cheap Iranian national team jersey, the "Cheetah" has become a permanent fixture on the jersies and has lost its true purpose. This is not a symbol for Iran.

Take a deep breath, the printed Cheetah isn't hurting anyone.

[Bi-honar]

This "Cheetah" imprint was meant to be just a one time thing for World Cup event, to bring awareness for this endangered animal in Iran. Now thank to a large inventory of made-in-Bangladesh cheap Iranian national team jersey, the "Cheetah" has become a permanent fixture on the jersies and has lost its true purpose. This is not a symbol for Iran.

Well, its true purpose was to draw attention to the critically endangered status of the Asiatic Cheetahs - that message needs to be spread and reinforced by the fans, media and even Team Melli themselves - unfortunately the cheetahs on the jerseys don't talk!

I've had many people ask me why Iran has a cheetah on their jersey and I've always gone out of my way to explain it. Most people, including many Iranians were completely unaware that there were still cheetahs outside Africa, let alone in Iran - or how close to extinction they were.

And the fact that it has given us one more way to refer to Team Melli, other than the Persian Lions which most people never used, goes to show that it hasn't really lost its true purpose IMHO which was to draw attention to this subject.

You guys can all draw a little more attention to it by promoting these articles that refer to Team Melli as the cheetahs on Facebook - just a click away with the FB like button on the article.