Who was the most damaging coach for Team Melli?

[DR Strangemoosh]

As we are on the lookout for a new coach and era for our national team, it will be interesting to ask this question as we often seem to debate around this topic, without actually getting a general consensus.

We may go through a fallow period, who knows we may finally get some glory in the most unexpected of ways...

Out of the coaches who have been in charge of TM for 15 games or more (forgive me for the arbitrary number, but I don't think it's easy to judge a coach with less than this), who has been the most damaging? Please be respectful in your answers, we are only talking about football not personalities.

[_Navid_]

Talebi, if we had kept ivic we would have passed our group in 1998.

2nd would be Daei, we missed world cup 2010 because he was chosen incompetently.

[Leicester City]

Carlos Quieroz

[DR Strangemoosh]

Carlos Quieroz

For me, he was by far the best coach we have had over the last few decades. Still not perfect, but I had much less criticism of him than any other coach, and he made me really proud to be a TM fan for two world cups, beyond the extent that he professionalised our football and built a team for the future. He restored pride and brought the name of Iran back to the lips of football pundits I have met over the last few years.

To me, he is the opposite of damaging, he sowed seeds of growth and hope in a scorched earth. Not perfect, but the best I've seen.


My vote is for Branko Ivankovic, a coach who we all loved so much when he took over from Ivic, he had some of the greatest goodwill we have seen in a TM coach initially. But over time, there were so many damaging decisions, such that the TM which he gave to his successors was an absolute shambles.

At the time I said it would take a decade to recover from what he did to TM, in practice it was 6 years, but still.... Some of his impact on conditioning and on team spirit really took a long time to fix.



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The Branko effect for TM.


- SPINELESSNESS: Sticking with one goalkeeper (Mirzapour) who was error-prone, and not even giving a chance to test other alternatives, and there were a few (contrast with CQ). Not altering his tactics and game plan, and keeping with the same formations/line-ups for every damn game. He just didn't want to experiment and try different players, he didn't like any chance. We had a series of very feeble performances in the 2005-early 2006 period but NOTHING was changed after them, and he had a lot more new talent at his disposal than his predecessors (remember poor Pourheidari who had a midfield of Fekri, Navazi, Halali to pick from)

Let's not forget fleeing after the WC2006, not having the guts to come back to Iran (compare with Queiroz)

- OUTSIDE INFLUENCE: Branko let himself be influenced too much by player agents such as Reza Fazeli who was in the TM camp for the World Cup, and we all know that it affected the team spirit. He also let Daei dictate matters far too much in terms of team selection.

- TEAM SPIRIT: Our team spirit was the worst for WC06 when players were even refusing to pass to each other, let alone speaking with each other, or even slapping each other on the pitch in the most embarrassing event of iranian football history (contrast with CQ and the tight-knit unit he built)

- TACTICAL NONSENSE: After finally bringing Bayern Munich's Hashemian back into the fold, he pushed him out to the wing (absolute no man's land) to accommodate a stagnant Ali Daei, who was playing 90 minutes for every game, not even subbed out for young strikers to get a chance to get some game time.

- TROLLING: Bringing Khatibi back to TM, starting him and Enayati. Khatibi was a constant source of frustration, the worst finisher we have ever had internationally, how he had so many caps no one can explain (well, apart from Branko and Khatibi's agent at the time Fazeli probably).

- POOR TEAM SELECTION: When we had more talented players, I never understood why Branko picked Badavi, Alavi, Kameli Mofrad, Khatibi, Sattar Zare. He had a favoured group of players who he stuck with, who were worse than a number of their peers in IPL. His team selections were often the antithesis of meritocracy, contrast with the most recent coach.

- OGHDEH - Falling out with his prized player when the latter refused to move to Dynamo Zagreb in 2005. At the time he was the only two-footed playmaker apart from Karimi and he was player of the year in IPL at the age of 21. He was just dropped after Branko's lajbaazi.

- STIFLING DEVELOPMENT - We had, at the time, arguably our brightest crop of aged 18-22 youngsters who all looked very talented. They weren't given enough playing time internationally to develop and ended up dwindling, as the coach just kept playing the same people for 90 minutes regardless of how they performed (contrast with CQ). Everyone remembers how healthily these players were developing until they hit a brick wall of a coach who just didn't give them the opportunities that e.g. Queiroz gave Azmoun, Beiranvand, Taremi, Ezatollahi and many more

- CONDITIONING AND INJURIES - His obsession with playing long-term injured players when they still needed recovery was long-lasting for some of our most promising players in that era some of whom never really recovered. Instead of waiting for players to be 100% fit.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Carlos Quieroz

These stats are fake. He had two stints for TM, the first is not included in this image (and the first were official full TM games PRIOR to the games he took over the U23 for the Asian Games), which brings his win percentage well below what is on this Persepolis social media image - 58.7%

The numbers for Queiroz are also fake

Please don't post fake statistics from a social media account.

In any case, how do these fake stats relate to the argument? They don't seem to show anything to contribute to the poll?

[Keano]

Good thread and poll, tough call. For me it's a battle between Talebi and Daei.

Talebi, because his timing was just not right. We got rid of a world class and amazing coach, just to replace it with a domestic coach. Especially that our camp in Italy at the time was entrapped in anti-Ivic conspiracies.

As for Daei, I think it was wayyyy too early for him to take helm of TM coaching. His club coaching had just started with Saipa, he had just won IPL title with title as a player/coach and his installment as TM coach was just unjustifiable and destructive for both him and Team Melli. He should have declined at the time, waiting for the right time to take charge IMHO.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Good thread and poll, tough call. For me it's a battle between Talebi and Daei.

Talebi, because his timing was just not right. We got rid of a world class and amazing coach, just to replace it with a domestic coach. Especially that our camp in Italy at the time was entrapped in anti-Ivic conspiracies.

As for Daei, I think it was wayyyy too early for him to take helm of TM coaching. His club coaching had just started with Saipa, he had just won IPL title with title as a player/coach and his installment as TM coach was just unjustifiable and destructive for both him and Team Melli. He should have declined at the time, waiting for the right time to take charge IMHO.

I always thought that, in defence of Daei, he did bring forward a few future stalwarts who helped us for the next era, even if his performance and a number of his tactical and personnel choices for TM were rather sub-par. I just thought his trust in youth meant that I couldn't quite consider him too damaging for TM overall.

Talebi may well be a popular choice, the team he handed over was absolutely starved, but it's difficult to ignore the glory of the 98 world cup, even if the groundwork wasn't his...

[mangekyou]

Branko by far!. The guy that didn't perform a single change throughout an entire wc match which we lost 3-1. The guy that had our golden generation of players but barely won us single point in a group that we shared with Mexico, Portugal and Angola. The guy that handed over a team with 0 vision for the feature, a team consisting of exhausted old boys players. The guy that made sure it took us 10 friggin years to form a decent team. God! How useless he was.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Branko by far!. The guy that didn't perform a single change throughout an entire wc match which we lost 3-1. The guy that had our golden generation of players but barely won us single point in a group that we shared with Mexico, Portugal and Angola. The guy that handed over a team with 0 vision for the feature, a team consisting of exhausted old boys players. The guy that made sure it took us 10 friggin years to form a decent team. God! How useless he was.

Careful, someone might post an image from a social media site which removes his 14 worst full national team games and say something like "stats are everything, I'm an engineer" loool.

[Leicester City]

Careful, someone might post an image from a social media site which removes his 14 worst full national team games and say something like "stats are everything, I'm an engineer" loool.

Why did you even bother putting Quieroz as an option if it offends you so much? Is this a poll or for you to see who chose CQ and target them?

[KC McElroy]

Undoubtedly the Angolan tire.

[DR Strangemoosh]

Why did you even bother putting Quieroz as an option if it offends you so much? Is this a poll or for you to see who chose CQ and target them?

Doesn't offend me at all LOOOL how did you derive that from my comment?!?

Happy for all you "Team Mellie manneeee" folk to vote for him, or people who have any strength of allegiance to any club (whether EsEs, PesPes, FesFes or whoever). Doesn't make any difference to me.

Just find the image hilarious.

[mangekyou]

Careful, someone might post an image from a social media site which removes his 14 worst full national team games and say something like "stats are everything, I'm an engineer" loool.

It wasn't even his games, he had 0 games. All TM games were either Karimi performing solo raids. Daei scoring goals that defy the laws of physics. Or our players somehow pulling a goal from their asses. Not to mention that the level of football in Asia 10 years ago (except for Japan, Korea, SA) where comparable to the level of Somalias national team.

[nisfejahan]

Beh Ran Goh

Did more damage than anyone else. The rest of the domestic coaches were incompetent. But he killed a generation of Iranian forwards...

[Behzad12]

How can so many people vote for CQ in this poll?