Dragan Skočić Appreciation Thread!

[BacheLot]

I think it's not about quality or performance(results) but about methods.
IFF claims this (with Sko) has been cheapest and less stressful qualification.

well let's not also forget the huge role COVID restrictions played into reducing our overall cost of WCQfor 2022 compared to wc18/wc14.... we were forced to hold WCQ without the usual days/week long training camps, travel and hotel costs to different playing venues for each game etc..!! for example we played some 3-4? wcq in couple of weeks with just one travel to Bahrain when hotels and practice facilities were booked probably on the cheap due to no one traveling during the pandemic...etc. off course also a decent portion of the savings came from taking a Huge Risk of hiring an amature nobody coach with zero international coaching experience to get us outa Horrible situation footballing & especially FINANCIALLY that an imbecile con-artist (supposedly internationally recognized big name coach) had put us into ...!! just because we got lucky and that gamble worked doesnt mean CQ had robbed us for years prior..!!
besides do you honestly think had Dragan taken over the TM in the same mess of a squad quality situation as when CQ took over, we woulda been anywhere close to qualifying now..? its those expenses over the prior years which slowly yielded us a squad which is more than 80% playing in respectable EU leagues and envy of all of asia now..!!

ps
i never did see the cartoon / chart or whatever it was that sparked this debate..!

[BacheLot]

Nooshe janesh. See my prior post. Also, he was never paid on time and would coach simply on credit. Don't forget the fiasco of trying to pay him with all the banking limitations. The man deserved it and more.

yep and lets not also forget that for every dollar we spent on CQ IFF got $2 returned back to them via prize winnings for WC qualifications and etc..!!
besides he was a well known, well experienced and very much respected international coach (not like a nobody which eskoocher was at time of hiring.) As such you Get watch you pay for...!! besides he worked his asss off for it ... didnt shortchange us one bit and we couldnt have asked for a more Dedicated, flexible and hard working european well respected foreign coach...!! just his Marketing value to IR worth more than double his salary... IR Cronies couldnt have even bought Half the Positive International Publicity that he constantly provided for Iran throughout his long career in iran ..! Carlos Literally put us on the international football map..!
besides if we didnt hire him for whatever it was $1.5-2mil a year? then somebody else woulda hired him for that or more ...!! Proof...? Columbia hiring him literally for double that figure right afterwards ... and god knows what he is making currently as coach of Egypt ? but i can't imagine it being too much less than what we were paying him...? if not more..!!

the only reason we got eskoocher on the cheap is because he couldnt get a more lucrative international job offered to him as a rookie..!! especially not a job as attractive and high profile as that of Iran's..! do you think if he leaves us now he couldnt easily garner a job at even 3-5 times his current salary..?

same situation applies to ungodly amounts big companies pay to their CEOs... does anybody's work really that difficult and gueling to worth 100s of Millions ...? not really but if the guy brings Billions of profit to his company then he gets 2-500 milliion salary... !! thats how he justifies his salary ....and he only gets those high paying jobs because most probably he has worked his way up to that level of hiring..!

[Hosseini]

Even thinking back to the time when we were wanting a coach after the Wilmots disaster, it was a very tumultuous time. Threat of war was high then. IFF was broke and had a bad rep of going back on promises.

Iran's job wasn't very attractive I think. People like Golmohammadi even didn't want the job, likely because it was a big risk with Iran in an extremely tough spot.

IFF lucked out HARD with Skocic, not just with finances, but with results. He did something close to very improbable with those results in Bahrain.

Skocic had the balls to take the job and excelled. That confidence and risk taking is part of what made him the coach he is. If Iran didn't qualify, his rep would possibly have been destroyed.

yep and lets not also forget that for every dollar we spent on CQ IFF got $2 returned back to them via prize winnings for WC qualifications and etc..!!
besides he was a well known, well experienced and very much respected international coach (not like a nobody which eskoocher was at time of hiring.) As such you Get watch you pay for...!! besides he worked his asss off for it ... didnt shortchange us one bit and we couldnt have asked for a more Dedicated, flexible and hard working european well respected foreign coach...!! just his Marketing value to IR worth more than double his salary... IR Cronies couldnt have even bought Half the Positive International Publicity that he constantly provided for Iran throughout his long career in iran ..! Carlos Literally put us on the international football map..!
besides if we didnt hire him for whatever it was $1.5-2mil a year? then somebody else woulda hired him for that or more ...!! Proof...? Columbia hiring him literally for double that figure right afterwards ... and god knows what he is making currently as coach of Egypt ? but i can't imagine it being too much less than what we were paying him...? if not more..!!

the only reason we got eskoocher on the cheap is because he couldnt get a more lucrative international job offered to him as a rookie..!! especially not a job as attractive and high profile as that of Iran's..! do you think if he leaves us now he couldnt easily garner a job at even 3-5 times his current salary..?

same situation applies to ungodly amounts big companies pay to their CEOs... does anybody's work really that difficult and gueling to worth 100s of Millions ...? not really but if the guy brings Billions of profit to his company then he gets 2-500 milliion salary... !! thats how he justifies his salary ....and he only gets those high paying jobs because most probably he has worked his way up to that level of hiring..!

[diz]

OK. Back to Skocic. I did some digging around and yes, looks like our passing accuracy has improved under Skocic. The graph is missing some games, only includes the ones I could find data on, but what do you think, have our players improved, or does the new system lend itself to more accurate passing? Does anyone know if it is known if passing accuracy is different under different systems of football? [ATTACH=CONFIG]19121[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the graph, love the statistical approach to this. My takes are the following:

1) I agree that the trend is overall good
2) However, comparing Dragan's results in a short few months to CQ's results over 2 or more years seems a stretch (in fact, if you only look at CQ's final year, the mean passing accuracy may be the same as under Dragan, with a difference in SEM/SD)
3) One can also argue that CQ's style/leadership/etc lead to his final year's good passing accuracy and was simply adopted by Dragan, and underwent its natural progression to what it is now.

In short, I don't think we have enough data in the Dragan years yet to make any over arching conclusions between now and the CQ years (though time will tell)

[Philosophy_King]

Thanks for the graph, love the statistical approach to this. My takes are the following:
1) I agree that the trend is overall good
2) However, comparing Dragan's results in a short few months to CQ's results over 2 or more years seems a stretch (in fact, if you only look at CQ's final year, the mean passing accuracy may be the same as under Dragan, with a difference in SEM/SD)
3) One can also argue that CQ's style/leadership/etc lead to his final year's good passing accuracy and was simply adopted by Dragan, and underwent its natural progression to what it is now.
In short, I don't think we have enough data in the Dragan years yet to make any over arching conclusions between now and the CQ years (though time will tell)

I agree that we need more data to compare Dragan to CQ. For now we can only look at the result we got against Asians sides, and beside Iraq&Bahrain&Korea there was no real Test for Skocic. We couldn't defeat Iraq under CQ but managed to outplay them the last three games under Skocic. Yet we couldn't defeat Korea while under CQ we dominated them at Azadi. Now one could argue that Iraq become much weaker and Korea on the other hand much stronger. Time will tell about Skocics abilities. Can't wait for our game against Korea in Seoul, where he can prove himself. My biggest "issue" with CQ is that we couldn't win the Asian Cup nor did we defeat any Asian Powerhouse under his reign beside Korea. The games against Japan still left a bad taste in my mouth, i truly hope that we get the chance to play them soon.

[Hosseini]

Thanks for the graph, love the statistical approach to this. My takes are the following:

1) I agree that the trend is overall good
2) However, comparing Dragan's results in a short few months to CQ's results over 2 or more years seems a stretch (in fact, if you only look at CQ's final year, the mean passing accuracy may be the same as under Dragan, with a difference in SEM/SD)
3) One can also argue that CQ's style/leadership/etc lead to his final year's good passing accuracy and was simply adopted by Dragan, and underwent its natural progression to what it is now.

In short, I don't think we have enough data in the Dragan years yet to make any over arching conclusions between now and the CQ years (though time will tell)

CQ also played way better opponents over the course of his time with Iran. Someone pointed out how even the wc prep friendlies were teams that were head and shoulders above the usual AFC squads we play

[metallica69]

There is not point in comparing and apple to and orange. Nothing in this equal for these two coaches. CQ came to Iran at a time when the economy was a bit better, things with him got real bad when trump announced the sanctions. We actually hosted and sponsored him for the group that I was working with at the time. He got 2 million dollars for that sponsorship alone. Also CQ being who he is he always got what he wanted, which was his most positive trait. The marriage of scokci and TM is one of convenience, we all know what a mess of a country we have now, more then ever.

There is no doubt he inherited a solid team and structure from CQ that was a given and CQ was our coach for 8 years so that is expected, however what has happened in our current team with the invitation of many players that would never be invited before is great, for context watch Vahid Amir’s interview with Azizi.

[Farzadfarhangni]

Passing accuracy is not a very helpful gauge of anything. Generally, a team with higher possession also has the higher passing accuracy because they are more patient, their defenders and midfielders knock the ball around in between themselves while they look for an opening, racking up completed passes that are really meaningless. Meanwhile, a counter attacking team does not have possession much of the game. Once they get the ball, they try to get it upfield in one or two risky passes that often fail and hence a low passing accuracy.

Perhaps a better matrix would be "forward passes", but even that can be misleading. Ultimately, expected goals for and against is the best way to compare team's performances and hence coach's performance but I don't think they calculate it for our games or if they do, they don't publicize it. And there is subjectivity associated with the calculation of expected goals too.

[Doctor DOOM]

Let's not forget that CQ paid his assistants and staff with his own money...

And let's not forget that Skocic is getting something equal to CQ's assistants.
Fair is fair

Also let's not make CQ a mother freaking Theresa or 2nd coming of Jesus.
He did pocket a good bundle.
I say nooshe joonesh as he helped TM gain respect. But that doesn't change the fact that he earned very well too. And money & his salary was one of his top priorities.

[Doctor DOOM]

OK. Back to Skocic. I did some digging around and yes, looks like our passing accuracy has improved under Skocic. The graph is missing some games, only includes the ones I could find data on, but what do you think, have our players improved, or does the new system lend itself to more accurate passing? Does anyone know if it is known if passing accuracy is different under different systems of football? [ATTACH=CONFIG]19121[/ATTACH]

Two factors.
Under CQ we mostly sat bck and played deep, often surrendering the pitch to the opponents with reliance on sudden counters (which means fewer passes to reach opponent box)

Also his formations were bottom heavy with more defensive players, and the few offensive ones had to stick to a rigid movement regimen (compared to Skocic allowing more freedom to our mid and attackers)

[Abtin]

And let's not forget that Skocic is getting something equal to CQ's assistants.
Fair is fair

Also let's not make CQ a mother freaking Theresa or 2nd coming of Jesus.
He did pocket a good bundle.
I say nooshe joonesh as he helped TM gain respect. But that doesn't change the fact that he earned very well too. And money & his salary was one of his top priorities.

Agree. What would be even more impressive is if DS can make us advance from the group stage in Qatar.

[St_Mark]

Let's not forget that CQ paid his assistants and staff with his own money...

TM assistants had their own contracts with IFF.
+ According to the contract, 10% of the reward for qualifying for the WC in Russia ($8,000,000) belonged to CQ and 5% to his assistants.
Indeed, as we speak one of his assistant Miko has sued IFF for unpaid $30,000 bonus.

Peoples are entitled to receive their contract amount.

[MucizeLions1992]

We don't know yet how we and South Korea will approach the game in March. If both teams field anything close to their best line-up (which I expect as it's a rivalry and important World Ranking points are at stake - we challenge for pot two, Korea for pot three)
my expectation on Skocic is to draw at least.

A draw or a win and Skocic has my full support to remain our coach for the World Cup. I don't ask for a win straight away because I know for a fact that the current South Korea team is much better than that of 2018 qualfying.
So, It's pointless to compare him to what Queiroz got us against South Korea.

[amas20]

We don't know yet how we and South Korea will approach the game in March. If both teams field anything close to their best line-up (which I expect as it's a rivalry and important World Ranking points are at stake - we challenge for pot two, Korea for pot three)
my expectation on Skocic is to draw at least.

A draw or a win and Skocic has my full support to remain our coach for the World Cup. I don't ask for a win straight away because I know for a fact that the current South Korea team is much better than that of 2018 qualfying.
So, It's pointless to compare him to what Queiroz got us against South Korea.

The South Korea game in Seoul will be the real test for Skocic. But even if we lose we should not panic.

[DR Strangemoosh]

I still don't understand why we are comparing individual results or records. It is about building a team and creating foundations of success.

Queiroz is a God for what he has done for Iranian football. How he took us back from oblivion and blooded all this generation of star players who credit so much success to him

Skocic is doing very well and I am proud of the consistency of results.

Why compare?

I'm just proud to have been at Brazil and Russia and hope Qatar continues the trajectory