This was just so embarrassing (Korea-Iran)

[Payam_Ali]

... in the fairy land of "DRAGAN SKOCIC APPRECIATION THREAD" until full ridehman in WC.

LMFAO

[Pedram88]

Ehsan messed up the dynamic of the game being selfish the first chance Iran had, if Iran scored that goal the energy would of been different. I ONLY BLAME EHSAN

[Team Melli Fan]

I am so tired of watching bezan ziresh hoofball

[momad2468]

A few points:

* Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The parallels between this WCQ and 2006 are crazy. The tough first round, the easy second round ending with a loss against the key rivals in a dead rubber. Branko had the same issues as Skocic - an over reliance on certain players, baffling selections - ultimately, WC 2006 was a disaster, yet people were saying the same things about Branko as they were about Skocic (he is getting results etc.). We are headed for disaster, and I was saying this before the Korea game. We have shown no improvement over this WCQ campaign.
* A back 4 system relies on players at left and right back who are comfortable on the ball, can deal with a press and pass accurately into space. Even though Shoja was good defensively, he and Milad lost countless balls when they were pressed. The less said about Gholami the better.
* We picked 3 “run like a chicken with their heads cut off” midfielders in Ahmad, Hajsafi and Amiri. They don’t actually understand what a coordinated press looks like. Ahmad often leaves his position to press on his own, leaving huge gaps in midfield. He is honestly one of the weakest players I have seen for TM who gets consistent game time. He is uncomfortable on the ball, and defensively he is actually horrible, despite the fact he runs a lot. His “slide tackle” on Son was laughable, and gave him the space for his shot.
* Tactics were all wrong. Korea is a strong team so no one is expecting us to go there and dominate possession, but their backline is weak and error prone. We gave them what they wanted by starting so defensively.
* On the plus side, I thought Mehdipour and Allahyar looked good when they came on. We are desperate for another quality centre midfielder, I am hopeful Mehdipour can help Ezzatolahi.

[Ari]

Very interesting that a lot of u guys were critisizing most times CQ not being in iran and not speaking persian. What about Skocic? At least CQ was planing and making strategies for team melli.

[zahedika]

Not too bothered by this score, we were missing a good chunk of our quality and the look on our young or replacement players faces were quite telling (scared sh-tless comes to mind). The goal let in by Abedzadeh was bad (he will learn that he cannot knock the ball down all the time), but it all started because we lost the ball near the midfield and our midfield did not do its job. What became obvious is our lack of depth and how important the the players that we were missing are to this team and how much our offensive game helps our defensive efforts. Also say what you say about ARJ and Saeed, but they are very important in our offensive and defensive transition. Put Saeed, ARJ, Moharrami and Taremi in the mix, and all of the sudden you can bring back Noorafkan to LB in place of Mohammadi (he has been regressing since WC 2018 and now is just terrible, body of a man, brain of a frog and football IQ of a roach), have ARJ and Amiri in the midfield with Saeed (No Hajsafi!!) and then our go to front 3 (Taremi, Sardar and Gholi). In the absence of COVID-19 casualties, we would have SKs number, they would not be running crazy in the middle and their backs would not be moving up as freely.
SK should not get too cocky either, they beat a depleted Iran team that lost a starter to injury. If it were not for Saeed's 2 shot going off the goal post they would have lost 3-1 or at best 3-2 in Iran.
At the end of the day, let's hope that this is a learning lesson for the team and the coaches. Also let's hope that we have seen Hajsafi and Milad for the last time.

[Nokhodi]

ITs good I cant even see the people usually so far up skocic's you know where that their brains are deprived from oxygen too active atm. Some of them even correctly predicted impending failure and jumped ship before the game lol.

There are so many issues with what we saw but to summarize a few...

1. Player Selection in squad and in xi/subs:

It started with the list. In general when you are highly dependent on Ezatolahi, Moharrami, Taremi and backups arent in the same league you should be make concerted effort to incorporate a few alternate options throughout the qualification process so that when said players are not available, you have built up some replacements who have some experience and understand what is expected of them. To me it seemed one such player was Hardani, who suddenly in best form doesnt even make the list. The best replacement for Saeid is clearly Omid Ebrahimi...he doesnt get a callup but suddenly Kamal Kamyabinia does? We have quite a few solid offensive options in europe, especially Alipour and Mohebbi who continue to display solid form and growing confidence. With Azmoun as isolated as he was tonight, would it not have been wise to have these 2 options instead of players even Skocic doesnt feel comfortable using (Torabi, Ansarifard).

Going into xi...bizarre choices to play guys out of position. At least shoja has experience at RB for PP and did well there, but noorafkan at DM? He wasnt good enough to play DM for charleroi and they sent him back to iran. In sepahan he wasnt good enough for mid zone and eventually settled at LB. How can he start such a hard game at DM for TM? Hajsafi in midfield, again super questionable. Then the Gholami sub was icing on the cake. The guys reaction seemed like nobody told him going in at RB was a possibility...Given shoja's questionable fitness pre game this was definitely something that warranted proper consideration and preparation. Why not just play a typical right back and one of the best in the league, esmailifar?


2. Players not understanding their roles / how to adjust to new game situations

Builds on point 1. But not sure these guys even knew what they needed to do. Amiri looked lost, Milad had zero clue how to advance the ball, the midfield was totally dysfunctional and provided no outlets for the defenders to pass through. Seriously, what was the role of the respective CMs today? What did they bring to the game? Gholami looked lost and frightened and positionally very off. Iranian players are limited in many ways and need a very narrow scope of tactical responsibility, with super defined tasks, like CQ gave them. Then they can excel. Unfortunately Sko just puts them out there with seemingly little instruction and it shows. When we went 1-0 down he had 15 mins to organize the team for a comeback...Instead they went out and looked worse. Its almost as if nobody calculated the possibility that we go behind and what to do if it happened. Issue with having a novice coach whose biggest job was malavan coaching at this level, he has never had to react in such a situation, he has no clue what to do. Meanwhile with CQ we went down vs Portugal, tied the game and had great opportunities to win it as well. Ditto for performance after going behind vs Spain. Clearly he planned for the event we concede a goal.

3. Isolation of Sardar

Sardar is a gem. With Taremi our only top class player. And his mentality is great and that of a pure fighter, look at all the times he saved our ass from difficult situations throughout this qualification process. Despite him not being in top shape at the moment, he can still be more than useful. To maximize the potential of our best player, we need to ensure even if we adopt a counter attacking approach that he is not overly isolated. He looked like new life was injected into him when Allahyar came on, should have had a brilliant assist and finally had one of his great runs recognized by allahyar's cross. Allahyar should have been there from minute 1 today. Instead we got the bizarre combo of Norafkan, Nourollahi, Hajsafi and Amiri, quite literally in addition to milad the weakest players from technical perspective on TM.

4. Skocic is out of his depth.

Those who say otherwise live in a different world, one where somebody whose biggest jobs were malavan and khoone be khoone, where he had subpar results, will suddenly be able to compete with international coaches at worst the level of today's bento, and likely much much better at the WC. He is purely reactionary, doesnt plan for second and third scenarios, has the most weird player selection that confuses even himself, and has zero long term vision or planning. We should have been incorporating guys like Allahyar, Hardani, Mehdipour, Yasin Salmani, and another alternate LB option for the past 1yr+ so in the event they are needed they know their jobs and have the confidence to produce. This doesnt necessarily mean starting them, but continuously incorporating them and improving their level. Look at how CQ experimented with guys like Mohammad Ansari, Rouzbeh Cheshmi, Majid Hosseini in leadup to WC so that in the event he determined Jalal wouldnt be able to cut it, the other options had time to show themselves and establish who was best suited to play and what their job was. Look at how he determinde perfect CM to partner saeid was ebrahimi after trying guys like abdollahzadeh, Akbar Imani, Hajsafi in CM slot. He did it gradually in a way where overall balance of team was not disturbed and if these test players performed badly they were not exposed, but still allowed him to assess which ones would be useful moving forward.

Lot of work needed. I prefer to view today as a positive though. Imagine he squeaked a crappy draw or something, there would be no touching him or demanding improvement and everybody would remain in the fairy land of "DRAGAN SKOCIC APPRECIATION THREAD" until full ridehman in WC.

I feel seen.

I think every point you make is valid and fair. I disagree though.

I am not too bummed about the players called up as we know who our starters if the key players are healthy. Yes it would be great to have a deep bench, but truthfully I think most of those players are relatively close to each other in ability and the difference in their showing is tied to their form at the moment.

I don’t know how you think a change of the head coach would fix two things:

1 - players we expected to be at their peaks physically, mentally and in terms of experience ended up regressing (Sadegh, MiMo, Ezatollahi, even JB and Gholi to a point.) Again, we might get lucky and have them carry insanely good early season football (September-October-November 2022) into the World Cup, but I think that’s expecting a lot.

2 - say what you will about today’s game, it at least tested our players. IFF is not going to do f*** all in terms of planning or when they try they’ll be so incompetent that the only friendlies we get will be at the invitation of others. My point being we need more challenging friendlies.

Really world cups are crap shoots. You need healthy players, experience and luck. Right now we have a little bit of each.

[taremiscores]

ITs good I cant even see the people usually so far up skocic's you know where that their brains are deprived from oxygen too active atm. Some of them even correctly predicted impending failure and jumped ship before the game lol.

There are so many issues with what we saw but to summarize a few...

1. Player Selection in squad and in xi/subs:

It started with the list. In general when you are highly dependent on Ezatolahi, Moharrami, Taremi and backups arent in the same league you should be make concerted effort to incorporate a few alternate options throughout the qualification process so that when said players are not available, you have built up some replacements who have some experience and understand what is expected of them. To me it seemed one such player was Hardani, who suddenly in best form doesnt even make the list. The best replacement for Saeid is clearly Omid Ebrahimi...he doesnt get a callup but suddenly Kamal Kamyabinia does? We have quite a few solid offensive options in europe, especially Alipour and Mohebbi who continue to display solid form and growing confidence. With Azmoun as isolated as he was tonight, would it not have been wise to have these 2 options instead of players even Skocic doesnt feel comfortable using (Torabi, Ansarifard).

Going into xi...bizarre choices to play guys out of position. At least shoja has experience at RB for PP and did well there, but noorafkan at DM? He wasnt good enough to play DM for charleroi and they sent him back to iran. In sepahan he wasnt good enough for mid zone and eventually settled at LB. How can he start such a hard game at DM for TM? Hajsafi in midfield, again super questionable. Then the Gholami sub was icing on the cake. The guys reaction seemed like nobody told him going in at RB was a possibility...Given shoja's questionable fitness pre game this was definitely something that warranted proper consideration and preparation. Why not just play a typical right back and one of the best in the league, esmailifar?


2. Players not understanding their roles / how to adjust to new game situations

Builds on point 1. But not sure these guys even knew what they needed to do. Amiri looked lost, Milad had zero clue how to advance the ball, the midfield was totally dysfunctional and provided no outlets for the defenders to pass through. Seriously, what was the role of the respective CMs today? What did they bring to the game? Gholami looked lost and frightened and positionally very off. Iranian players are limited in many ways and need a very narrow scope of tactical responsibility, with super defined tasks, like CQ gave them. Then they can excel. Unfortunately Sko just puts them out there with seemingly little instruction and it shows. When we went 1-0 down he had 15 mins to organize the team for a comeback...Instead they went out and looked worse. Its almost as if nobody calculated the possibility that we go behind and what to do if it happened. Issue with having a novice coach whose biggest job was malavan coaching at this level, he has never had to react in such a situation, he has no clue what to do. Meanwhile with CQ we went down vs Portugal, tied the game and had great opportunities to win it as well. Ditto for performance after going behind vs Spain. Clearly he planned for the event we concede a goal.

3. Isolation of Sardar

Sardar is a gem. With Taremi our only top class player. And his mentality is great and that of a pure fighter, look at all the times he saved our ass from difficult situations throughout this qualification process. Despite him not being in top shape at the moment, he can still be more than useful. To maximize the potential of our best player, we need to ensure even if we adopt a counter attacking approach that he is not overly isolated. He looked like new life was injected into him when Allahyar came on, should have had a brilliant assist and finally had one of his great runs recognized by allahyar's cross. Allahyar should have been there from minute 1 today. Instead we got the bizarre combo of Norafkan, Nourollahi, Hajsafi and Amiri, quite literally in addition to milad the weakest players from technical perspective on TM.

4. Skocic is out of his depth.

Those who say otherwise live in a different world, one where somebody whose biggest jobs were malavan and khoone be khoone, where he had subpar results, will suddenly be able to compete with international coaches at worst the level of today's bento, and likely much much better at the WC. He is purely reactionary, doesnt plan for second and third scenarios, has the most weird player selection that confuses even himself, and has zero long term vision or planning. We should have been incorporating guys like Allahyar, Hardani, Mehdipour, Yasin Salmani, and another alternate LB option for the past 1yr+ so in the event they are needed they know their jobs and have the confidence to produce. This doesnt necessarily mean starting them, but continuously incorporating them and improving their level. Look at how CQ experimented with guys like Mohammad Ansari, Rouzbeh Cheshmi, Majid Hosseini in leadup to WC so that in the event he determined Jalal wouldnt be able to cut it, the other options had time to show themselves and establish who was best suited to play and what their job was. Look at how he determinde perfect CM to partner saeid was ebrahimi after trying guys like abdollahzadeh, Akbar Imani, Hajsafi in CM slot. He did it gradually in a way where overall balance of team was not disturbed and if these test players performed badly they were not exposed, but still allowed him to assess which ones would be useful moving forward.

Lot of work needed. I prefer to view today as a positive though. Imagine he squeaked a crappy draw or something, there would be no touching him or demanding improvement and everybody would remain in the fairy land of "DRAGAN SKOCIC APPRECIATION THREAD" until full ridehman in WC.

inarsenewetrust for TM coach

[Hosseini]

One thing I think we can all agree: Kanaani is one of the most consistent and hardworking defenders we've had since Seyed Jalal

Even down 2-0 he was leading the team and getting into the attack, directing players. Never say die mentality in him. Yes he's made mistakes off the pitch but he can and will learn from those

Very lucky to have him and he deserves a lot of praise

[somebuffguy]

I personally think everyone is overreacting. Italy lost to North Macedonia today ffs. It happens.

[somebuffguy]

I feel seen.

I think every point you make is valid and fair. I disagree though.

I am not too bummed about the players called up as we know who our starters if the key players are healthy. Yes it would be great to have a deep bench, but truthfully I think most of those players are relatively close to each other in ability and the difference in their showing is tied to their form at the moment.

I don’t know how you think a change of the head coach would fix two things:

1 - players we expected to be at their peaks physically, mentally and in terms of experience ended up regressing (Sadegh, MiMo, Ezatollahi, even JB and Gholi to a point.) Again, we might get lucky and have them carry insanely good early season football (September-October-November 2022) into the World Cup, but I think that’s expecting a lot.

2 - say what you will about today’s game, it at least tested our players. IFF is not going to do f*** all in terms of planning or when they try they’ll be so incompetent that the only friendlies we get will be at the invitation of others. My point being we need more challenging friendlies.

Really world cups are crap shoots. You need healthy players, experience and luck. Right now we have a little bit of each.

It's not incompetency as much as it's the sanctions. You can tie my hands behind my back and beat the crap out of me, but that doesn't make me weak or incompetent. But you saying it does makes you a liar.

[Prowess]

After not losing to South Korea for many years, the final result is indeed, tough to swallow.

But should we honestly be surprised? Taremi, our best player was out, ARJ was sorely missed for his offense. Ghoddos for his composure on the ball, as well as Ezatollahi, for his distribution.

How many bad touches and misplaced passes did we see today? Many instances of low IQ plays, that I don’t think is fair to put squarely on Skocic’s shoulders. We are not Spain, to have a huge depth of talent. Take out a few of our best players, and the level of our team goes SIGNIFICANTLY down.

When Skocic has our A team at his disposal, he’s done very well, considering our overall lack of preparation we’ve had. I think we have to be fair, realistic, and not get too emotional without looking at the context of this game.

[oracle]

After not losing to South Korea for many years, the final result is indeed, tough to swallow.

But should we honestly be surprised? Taremi, our best player was out, ARJ was sorely missed for his offense. Ghoddos for his composure on the ball, as well as Ezatollahi, for his distribution.

How many bad touches and misplaced passes did we see today? Many instances of low IQ plays, that I don’t think is fair to put squarely on Skocic’s shoulders. We are not Spain, to have a huge depth of talent. Take out a few of our best players, and the level of our team goes SIGNIFICANTLY down.

When Skocic has our A team at his disposal, he’s done very well, considering our overall lack of preparation we’ve had. I think we have to be fair, realistic, and not get too emotional without looking at the context of this game.

how come during cq era
we where never depended on players.
it didnt matter who played
coach was strong.
skocic only gotten good result against2nd and 3rd level asian teams.

2 matches against a decent team
1 pt
lost 5 pt
1 goal scored
3 goal scored on
-2 gd

[metallica69]

When are we going to stop with the CQ comparison, CQ was a world class coach with a ton of experience. He had almost 8 years with the team.two World Cup qualifications was the best he could do, we saw the discipline when it mattered during his time. Most important changes we need to see is the preparations whoever is the coach. The World Cup is about 3 game, what we need now is a rest, we need to
League to finish soon, we are
Lucky that the WC is in November so the coach has the full summer break for a good camp for preparations.

As for yesterday’s game, the team looked tiered and out of gas, for those who
Have played team sports, no matter how good you are if you run out of gas there isn’t much you can do. Skocic selection of the roster with so many right back options in the league was very stupid. Other then that, this is how we have always played Korea we have dominated them twice in my memory once in Dubai 6-2 and then the 5-4 game. Other then those old games we have never dominated them

[P.dente]

I really don’t care if we loose 2-0 or 3-0, the line up that fat oaf put on the field was embarrassing. God, we hardly get any friendlies and this was the perfect opportunity for new young players to show what they got.
But NOOOO, he puts the oldest players possible in the most defensive and pathetic line up possible.
If it weren’t for our class players like Taremi, Azmoun and Jahanbakhs, this coach would of been fired months ago.
Korea outclassed us in every way today.


Truly embarrassing. This coach is not a person I would wanna follow as a player. Now I understand Taremi