Iranian weakness yet again fully exploited this time by Japan

[Surenas]

Do not get me wrong fellas, we have the biggest talent pool in Asia, we are the team with the biggest footballing tradition in Asia. Football and Iran are inseparable, in Japan, South Korea and so on, there is also baseball which is just as popular, but we are totally crazy about football. That's why defeat feels like we've lost a war.
The Japanese and South Koreans compensate for the lack of great talent by strict discipline and order, they want to dictate a game, they are a bit like the Germans. German football is also known to be not particularly demanding in the technical field. It is no coincidence that players of the category Pele, Maradona, Zidane and co. never came from Germany. The Germans come through discipline and fight in a game. The South Koreans and Japanese have correctly recognized that this system suits their talent pool.

We, on the other hand, are technically talented because the kids teach themselves football, but they do not learn it systematically.
I'm not saying that we should copy the Japanese system, but we should focus more on countries like Italy, with a strong defence (fits just fine, because of our physical strength), which can switch to technical offensive in case of danger.
What we need is the infrastructure, our playfulness we should keep because it is a characteristic of our cultural understanding of football.

But we must implement normative tactics and discipline and invest. Then we will become the kings of Asia and also a force in world football, if all these effects are ideally adapted to our country. After all this means, we have to invest like 20 years in our infrastructure and we will see the fruits of the work. We have also to consider we are still a country with great poverty, a country where many talented people just have one pair of clothes, a country where buying football shoes, is real issue for many talented kids, they just have to hope of the good will of someone. Without a step for more equality in the distribution of wealth, many people won't have the energy, wealth and time to spend for developing football. It shouldn't be like using football to come out of poverty, it must be a situation where the people can participate in the society and have fun in playing football! Then we would have situation to compare us with East Asia.

After all this is our reality, it's a big achivement to CQ and our team, that we are that big, despite all the adversities

[The Duck]

Then we would have situation to compare us with East Asia.

Its really only Japan and Korea in East Asia (Australia is not Asian). On a whole West Asia is much stronger than East Asia when you take out Japan and Korea.

[Surenas]

Its really only Japan and Korea in East Asia (Australia is not Asian). On a whole West Asia is much stronger than East Asia when you take out Japan and Korea.

I mean as a society

[Philosophy_King]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkzHmJxv9fE
interview with Masoud, PAG and Beiravand about the lost to Japan.
Somehow i got angry when i have heard PAG and Beiro opinions about the game.
First of all, PAG start to speaking about general things like "Japan has many players in Europe and had better
preparation". Why not speaking about the moments of the game? About Tactics, Mistakes etc.? We also have
players in Europe, we even drew Portugal and defeated an Moroccan Team with even better players than Japan had!
Than he continues by saying that the Ref. should give the Japanese player a card for diving but he didnt and we conced. This is such a
retarded attitude. Na Pouraliganji jan to kar be sute davar nadashte bash, to bazito bekon aslanam karet be davar nabashe!
Instead of growing by analyzing the flow of the game he is searching for good excuses.
Specially when Beiro is saying : "Ma kheyli khub bazi kardim nime aval va sai kardim goal nakhorim."
WTF is that!? Dude you have to score if you want to progress to the next stage. ATeam that wants to
be the champ have to play for the win and try to overcome the opponent.

[Leopard]

^ Your point is well taken. The players should not say something nonsense to justify what happened.
Unfortunately they are influenced by by they read and hear and all the comments of experts and non-experts.
many everywhere keep of talking about barnameh rizi, preparation and investment. That is nonsense. Japan struggled against Oman, TKM and almost every other team and their best game was against us the best team. Ben williams sysndrome and the fact that Taremi was carded in the previous game everyone was worried about missing the final. They did not think about present only. I had confidence we would win but as soon as I saw an Australian assigned as referee I got worried. Those players are much younger than me so give them a break. AFC screwed up. An incompetent 32 year old aussie is not equal to Faghani. It should have hired a professional unbiased european ref. If AFC thinks a 32 year old guy from australia is good enough for a game that is like final, then let it be. That is the value of a cup. forget the cup and out media should stop talking about cup drought and 42 years or whatever....

I say it again this Japanese team pokhi nist. CQ should have watched the goals scored on japan. Maybe he did not watch other teams giving Japan a hard time.

playing with one man in noke hamleh was our old style and never worked for TM when Bronco and GN and Ghotbi tried it. instead of taking shojaai, Jalal should have been there. After a goal jalal hosseini going in and organizing the team would have done it. TM players should be askedd how many times they reviewd the goals score on Japan by other teams such as TKM?

[Bladsville]

Azmoun and Taremi work as a duo. One without the other is incomplete.

O RLY?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLkrd0ojrA

[Philosophy_King]

^ Your point is well taken. The players should not say something nonsense to justify what happened.
Unfortunately they are influenced by by they read and hear and all the comments of experts and non-experts.
many everywhere keep of talking about barnameh rizi, preparation and investment. That is nonsense. Japan struggled against Oman, TKM and almost every other team and their best game was against us the best team. Ben williams sysndrome and the fact that Taremi was carded in the previous game everyone was worried about missing the final. They did not think about present only. I had confidence we would win but as soon as I saw an Australian assigned as referee I got worried. Those players are much younger than me so give them a break. AFC screwed up. An incompetent 32 year old aussie is not equal to Faghani. It should have hired a professional unbiased european ref. If AFC thinks a 32 year old guy from australia is good enough for a game that is like final, then let it be. That is the value of a cup. forget the cup and out media should stop talking about cup drought and 42 years or whatever....
I say it again this Japanese team pokhi nist. CQ should have watched the goals scored on japan. Maybe he did not watch other teams giving Japan a hard time.
playing with one man in noke hamleh was our old style and never worked for TM when Bronco and GN and Ghotbi tried it. instead of taking shojaai, Jalal should have been there. After a goal jalal hosseini going in and organizing the team would have done it. TM players should be askedd how many times they reviewd the goals score on Japan by other teams such as TKM?

Some great points:
- As you point out the players just adapt the opinion that experts, media, coach-stuff etc. had which is
that we didn't had good preparation like Japan. Yet Japan played after the world cup friendlies against Costa Rica,
Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela and Kirgisistan ( the last friendly which was played 20.11.2018).
Tm played after the WC Uzbek's, Bolivia, T&T, Venezuela, Palestine and Qatar (right before the start of AC).
I cant see here a big difference in friendly games for this period.
The more i am thinking about our game against Japan, the more i am sure that we loose this mentally/morally
against Japan. As you stressed out correctly, they are not that strong, they were struggling against Oman, Turkmenistan,
got dominated by KSA and even Vietnam created many scoring chances against them, more than we did and i think
we can all agree, that we have much more attacking potential than Vietnam!
Even the post-interview of our players show how weak their self-confidence actually is. They speak of Japan as if they
had lost to Brazil totally ignoring the fact that they were the favorites for that game and were even the better side till minute 55th!
This is the outcome if we emphasis to often and to strong that we are the underdogs, since our players will believe in it and this
believe will determined the course of their success.
-Another great point that you mentioned is the absence of a leader like Ando, Nekou or Seyed Jalal. Players like
Azmoun, PAG, Rezaian, Taremi, Torabi have some great skills but they are not mature enough for the big stage. Just have a
look how Azmoun collapsed and attacked the Jap. Player (Even a veteran like Haysafi loose his nervs during the game).
They boys lack the killer instinct, the professionalism and seriousness which is also the reason why Taremi and Azmoun miss
so many scoring chances. I hope for the future that we introduce some psychologist to the TM-Staff, the Boys need to be trained
mentally.
- Finally i have to agree with you that Azmoun was too isolated in that game. The long ball tactics works for some Chinese defense but
not against organized Japanese.

[Karimi 8]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkzHmJxv9fE
interview with Masoud, PAG and Beiravand about the lost to Japan.
Somehow i got angry when i have heard PAG and Beiro opinions about the game.
First of all, PAG start to speaking about general things like "Japan has many players in Europe and had better
preparation". Why not speaking about the moments of the game? About Tactics, Mistakes etc.? We also have
players in Europe, we even drew Portugal and defeated an Moroccan Team with even better players than Japan had!
Than he continues by saying that the Ref. should give the Japanese player a card for diving but he didnt and we conced. This is such a
retarded attitude. Na Pouraliganji jan to kar be sute davar nadashte bash, to bazito bekon aslanam karet be davar nabashe!
Instead of growing by analyzing the flow of the game he is searching for good excuses.
Specially when Beiro is saying : "Ma kheyli khub bazi kardim nime aval va sai kardim goal nakhorim."
WTF is that!? Dude you have to score if you want to progress to the next stage. ATeam that wants to
be the champ have to play for the win and try to overcome the opponent.

I agree that mistake was simply so amateur they should accept it and be ashamed of it, own it and not make excuses. It wasn’t because of their European based players that you stopped playing and protesting to the ref when the whistle hadn’t been blow. They completely blew it and let us down with a mistake that children don’t even make. At this stage from professional football players there’s no excuse. Accept it and deal with it and don’t feed us BS, it only makes the fans more upset.

[Roxanaz80]

O RLY?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLkrd0ojrA

Both talented, as a duo even more effective, namak o felfel.

[Philosophy_King]

You guys don't realize they were just saving their enegry? No wonder we can't win a tournament!

We rotated and saved Energy too! This was def. not the reason for our failure.

[Prowess]

I really wonder what was the mental state of the players before the game: were they feeling down cuz they were missing Taremi? Did they feel like they were playing against a superior team?

Portugal is A LOT better than Japan, but somehow I feel we showed more self-belief and fighting spirit against them than Japan.

Also, I wonder if Beiranvand had saved the Japanese player penalty, would it galvanize the players like it did in the World Cup?

I'm just at an utter loss of words of why they mentally self-destructed like that, knowing how MUCH emphasis CQ puts on psychological preparation.

[babak_iran]

I really wonder what was the mental state of the players before the game: were they feeling down cuz they were missing Taremi? Did they feel like they were playing against a superior team?

Portugal is A LOT better than Japan, but somehow I feel we showed more self-belief and fighting spirit against them than Japan.

Also, I wonder if Beiranvand had saved the Japanese player penalty, would it galvanize the players like it did in the World Cup?

I'm just at an utter loss of words of why they mentally self-destructed like that, knowing how MUCH emphasis CQ puts on psychological preparation.

I heard Veisi's interview on varzesh tv, apparently he was in UAE and close to the team. He said that our players were completely stressed in the pre game warmup before the Japan match and you can see it in their face and even our bench players looked stressed.

[NYCTeamMelli]

I know we had this underdogs, humble attitude etc, but I honestly think we also underestimated them, judging from how they played in the previous games..

~I agree; I think they may have looked past the Japan match. One evidence that I can use comes from the experienced Dejagah after the match against Japan. He says that he doesn't want to think about the fact that they are not in the final. Here is his quote and I quote: "“I don’t know how to say. I didn’t even think one percent about the defeat today, I thought we were going through. But this is football,” said the Tehran-born player, who won the European Under-21 Championship with Germany in 2009"

~ When a player says "I thought we were going through" in regards to a tournament match for a chance to play in the final, that pretty much means that they were already looking at playing a final against UAE-Qatar. I as a fan underestimated Japan because they were not as impressive in the earlier rounds of the tournament and compared to how impressive their totally different squad at the World Cup '18 was. They turned it up a notch at the right time and they showed us real depth (two primarily different teams sent to two major competitions within a 7 month time span). We have depth but the Japanese team has almost three A squads; we may have two A squads.

~ Was Japan great against Iran? Overall, they were solid but not terrific. We had the horrific defensive lapses and lost focus which ultimately lost us the match. But here I think is the difference: I don't the think the disciplined Japanese ever overlooked the match against the #1 FIFA ranked Asian team for at least four years running. It's almost like we took each game as a final (as we should have) up to the Japan game. We got overconfident with the Japan semifinal match and thought we had earned a spot in the final virtue of being the top performing team in the tournament up to that point and being superior in play to Japan up to that point. Maybe this well-drilled team finally lost focus and thought they were entitled to a title and had already been crowned as Champs of Asia?

~In addition, usually when two equally matched teams in a very high pressure knockout game play, the game is relatively close until maybe one team makes a breakthrough with a few finely executed moments and opportunities. In this game, we lost focus and were were pretty much done with after the 55th minute. Disappointing for a focus-driven, organized, and disciplined team that Queiroz had built over the years.

~ Moreover, there were a few signs earlier in the Asian Cup of Team Melli becoming emotional and losing focus by overly-complaining to the refs (see next indent/paragraph). Azmoun pushing to the ground the Yemenis defender on a set-piece is one instance. The ref in the China game was not kind by giving Taremi a yellow card when he slipped and accidentally fouled the Chinese player which meant that now Taremi would be missing the semifinal match. But maybe Taremi should have told the captain, Dejagah to talk to the referee about possibly reviewing his call.

~ Iranian footballers should learn to speak to the ref in one unified voice, hence, only the captain of the team should talk to the ref about possible missed or bad calls. They can gather around the captain and listen in and maybe add some points but all the direct communication to the ref should be done only by the captain. When every player speaks up, the refs may take them less seriously, see them more as constant complainers and it become confusing trying to listen to multiple players at once trying to make their points. We're not a top European team where almost every player can get the undivided attention of the ref but usually our captains over the years like Nekounam, Teymourian, J. Hosseini, Shojai and Dejagah have been able to command the attention of the refs.

A unified captain voice makes every argument about a questionable call sound more credible to the ref(s)