Why haven't we bid a proper farewell to our retired players?

[mistermo]

Over the past few years TM has seen many legendary players hang up their boots due to younger generations replacing them. Players such as Jalal Hosseini, Ando, Gucci, Pooladi, Nekounam, Rahman Ahmadi. All of them retired without any formal farewell game.

Since i've only been following TM closely for about 7 years I have a question for you old timers. Has it been like this with TM for past generations or is this something new?

I strongly feel that we owe it to these legends and the fans to host a friendly in Azadi as a formal goodbye game.

[KasraKhan]

TIL Mehrdad Pouladi and Rahman Ahmadi were legendary TM players.

[mistermo]

TIL Mehrdad Pouladi and Rahman Ahmadi were legendary TM players.

They were both tanks, idk what your talking about.

[Azeem98]

You don't see this tradition having long roots in international football anywhere. I think Ronaldo was the first one who got a proper farewell game.

[inarsenewetrust]

I thought about this too but given we can hardly organize friendlies for our senior team to prepare for something as important for Asian Cup, or the lengths we had to go to to get semi decent friendlies for WC (Taj having a heart attack), its really not that surprising that we havent made this a priority.

[teammelli91]

Nekounam got a farewell game vs Sweden and Karim Bagheri player his against Brazil.

But a farewell match hasn’t taken place in Azadi due to the fact that big teams would rather play us outside of Iran unless we pay them more than we would (millions).

[St_Mark]

According to Carlos Queiroz, there is no need for that, once you are a member of TM, you are always a member of TM and you won't be considered retired from TM. Much like honorary elites.
That is kind of his take.

[Roxanaz80]

Over the past few years TM has seen many legendary players hang up their boots due to younger generations replacing them. Players such as Jalal Hosseini, Ando, Gucci, Pooladi, Nekounam, Rahman Ahmadi. All of them retired without any formal farewell game.

Since i've only been following TM closely for about 7 years I have a question for you old timers. Has it been like this with TM for past generations or is this something new?

I strongly feel that we owe it to these legends and the fans to host a friendly in Azadi as a formal goodbye game.

Why don't u open a farewell/ tribute thread for them here...

[rdwrrr]

Technically you can not be retired from national team until you retire from professional football.
What they should do is to have a celebration and a thank you ceremony every 4 years before the very first world cup qualifying game to honor all Team Melli players that have retired from professional football during the last 4 years. This way all players that contributed will get honored and not a selected few.