Iran vs. Japan in the future...

[shahname]

I want to make a point here regarding Iran and Japan.

The teams we saw yesterday are the future national teams of these two countries. And judging by what I saw yesterday, I say Iran is going to dominate Japan on national team level in the future.

First of, we have several future stars in our team that didn´t even play yesterday. The likes of Azmoun, Alireza, Ezzatollahi etc. Secondly we have a world class coach in the shape of CQ.

In the past 10 years, Japan national team has been really scary with lots of star players, playing in the best leagues in Europe. They have been really dominant in Asia for over a decade now. But that´s about to change. The Japan team that I saw yesterday was overpowered by our team during 80-90 minutes and could easily have lost to us in regular time if we have had a bit of luck. Of course we all know the story - we ran out of gas in extra time and lost - but we were the better team for almost 90 minutes.

Now I say, future is going to be bright guys. And not going to Olympics is not going to change that. I really hope we qualify for the coming WC in Russia with a big contingent of young players. Carlos is gonna make sure, these lads can run for 120+ minutes. And by having a good performance in Russia, we will have lots of players going to good European clubs.

Of course I also hope clubs in Iran start investing more and more in football academies, good pitches and exchanging more knowledge with footballing countries like Germany, France etc. The work of somebody like Mahdavikia is essential and will show its effect in the near future.

[Z Joon]

Unfortunately I think that Japan will continue having players in best leagues simply because the market exists for them and Koreans already, and these leagues easily give them chances. For instance Torabi might be better than most of their U23 players, if not all of them, however their players still have more chance of ending in the Bundesliga, that's the harsh and unfair truth. That's why you can see Japanese players left and right being transferred cheaply to top leagues even tho they haven't proved themselves out of Japan.

Hopefully we change that soon by having our European legionnaires shine over there. But that doesn't contradict your idea, we might dominate their senior team the next few years however that still doesn't guarantee that we will have more players in top leagues than them, because football works more with connections nowadays

You guys should check this out for more details:

Nima Modyr, Agent of Ansarifard, Torabi, Kaveh Rezaei and other players: "Currently there are more Japanese players in top European league than Iranians, but personally I think that Iranian football players are much better"

Listen to the full podcast If you can, very interesting. We might very well see Kaveh Rezaei move to a European league like Sweden/Austria/Turkey etc... this transfer window (winter), he believes that Kaveh has the potential to attract the scouts to Iran much more

https://soundcloud.com/gol-bezan/interview-nima-modyr

[ali alipour]

This isn't really the right way of looking at things. Out of all the players on these u23 teams, only a few will end up going to the national team for either Iran or Japan. That's not to say Iran won't be able to beat Japan handily in the future but if we do it probably won't be because we were the better team over the 90 minutes in this game. Out of all the players on tm Omid I'd say only torabi, cheshmi, akhbari, milad mohammadi, ehsan Pahlevan, and kamandani will have a chance to be part of tm in the future.

In Iran there's also a pattern of players coming out of nowhere and ending up being an important part of tm. Look at taremi, Ghafouri, amiri, these guys were never really part of any youth teams but are consistent starters for tm. So really it's never doom and gloom when a youth team doesn't do good and it's not even remotely guaranteed that the senior team will be good if one of the youth teams does good. I still remember people going crazy about the 2009 u17 team and now we have most of the players nowhere to be found. This has been shown time and time again and I'm really not sure why people don't get there isn't a big correlation between youth success and national team success, but that's not to say we shouldn't be making these tournaments since they have recently gotten players to Europe.

[shahname]

This isn't really the right way of looking at things. Out of all the players on these u23 teams, only a few will end up going to the national team for either Iran or Japan. That's not to say Iran won't be able to beat Japan handily in the future but if we do it probably won't be because we were the better team over the 90 minutes in this game. Out of all the players on tm Omid I'd say only torabi, cheshmi, akhbari, milad mohammadi, ehsan Pahlevan, and kamandani will have a chance to be part of tm in the future.

In Iran there's also a pattern of players coming out of nowhere and ending up being an important part of tm. Look at taremi, Ghafouri, amiri, these guys were never really part of any youth teams but are consistent starters for tm. So really it's never doom and gloom when a youth team doesn't do good and it's not even remotely guaranteed that the senior team will be good if one of the youth teams does good. I still remember people going crazy about the 2009 u17 team and now we have most of the players nowhere to be found. This has been shown time and time again and I'm really not sure why people don't get there isn't a big correlation between youth success and national team success, but that's not to say we shouldn't be making these tournaments since they have recently gotten players to Europe.

You are absolutely right about the fact that being good in youth level doesn´t necessarily mean success on the senior level. Just look at African nations like Nigeria that almost exclusively becomes champions of U17 WC´s every time. When did their senior team do anything worth mentioning?

Or even talking about the olympic games, when did a country do well in the olympic games and then went on to win something of importance on the senior level?

But I think it would be fair to say that the U23 teams give a bit of a glimpse of the future. As you mentioned, there are some 5-10 players from the U23 team that will be a part of TM in the future. And judging by the performance of these players, I say we will be fully capable of dominating Japan in the near future on the senior level.

[Nariman]

Sorry bro. but you are getting overexcited, all based on one match. There is really no need to highlight the difference between Japan & Iran when it comes to facilities, management, professionalism, competence...etc...

I still agree that 1vs1 we have always shown to be on eye level at least with likes of Japan/Korea and I believe it will stay like that in the future as well - mainly because Iran continues to produce some of the best talents of the continent, if not the best. However when it comes to consistent, results and success at international stage Japan unfortunately has the upper hand. True, we are lucky to have CQ for now who will push us to the best of what we are capable off under this regime, but in the long run we won’t see our football truly reaching its full potential. CQ won't stay forever and IR will never really make major changes....

Don’t be surprised to see some of Japan's U23 players ending up in Europe, while our supposed superior players either vanish in IPL or go for the money in 8-0er leagues. This already has been the case for the last years as well, so it's nothing new.

[tmfan]

I want to make a point here regarding Iran and Japan.
The teams we saw yesterday are the future national teams of these two countries. And judging by what I saw yesterday, I say Iran is going to dominate Japan on national team level in the future.
First of, we have several future stars in our team that didn´t even play yesterday. The likes of Azmoun, Alireza, Ezzatollahi etc. Secondly we have a world class coach in the shape of CQ.
In the past 10 years, Japan national team has been really scary with lots of star players, playing in the best leagues in Europe. They have been really dominant in Asia for over a decade now. But that´s about to change. The Japan team that I saw yesterday was overpowered by our team during 80-90 minutes and could easily have lost to us in regular time if we have had a bit of luck. Of course we all know the story - we ran out of gas in extra time and lost - but we were the better team for almost 90 minutes.
Now I say, future is going to be bright guys. And not going to Olympics is not going to change that. I really hope we qualify for the coming WC in Russia with a big contingent of young players. Carlos is gonna make sure, these lads can run for 120+ minutes. And by having a good performance in Russia, we will have lots of players going to good European clubs.
Of course I also hope clubs in Iran start investing more and more in football academies, good pitches and exchanging more knowledge with footballing countries like Germany, France etc. The work of somebody like Mahdavikia is essential and will show its effect in the near future.

Japan didn't take us seriously until extra time. They were just waiting for us to run out of gas. The scoreline was fair and it could have been worse. After their third goal, they wasted at least three easy chances. They know how to win the game. That's why they always qualify for the WC finals and Olympic Games and have won four Asian Cups since 1990s. The gap between us and them looks small but actually it doesn't.

As for moving to Europe, our players aren't simply better than Japanese and Koreans. Most of our fans don't want to admit the fact, though. Just look up the average Kicker ratings of Hajsafi and Japanese players. The former plays in the second Bundesliga but his average rating is worse than most of the Japanese players who play in the first Bundesliga.

2.62 Kagawa (Dortmund)
3.06 Kiyotake (Hannover)
3.28 Muto (Mainz)
3.65 Osako (Koln)
3.70 Haraguchi (Hertha Berlin)
3.85 Sakai (Hannover)
3.88 Hasebe (Frankfurt)
3.93 Sakai (Hamburg)
4.23 Hajsafi

Atsuto Uchida (Schalke) hasn't made any appearances this season because of a long term injury but he scored 3.29 last season. Shinji Okazaki currently playing in England scored 3.41 last season with 13 goals.

Hajsafi said he wanted to move to the top tier but at this rate his dream will never come true. He is quite average even in the second division.