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I stayed after the USA game - this team seems quite broken in terms of spirit.
The body language of Kolakovic was awful and his decision making seemed really poor, from substitution choices to video review calls. It was an absolute mess.
More seriously (as I don't expect him to be around for too much longer) the body language of the players was poor and things seemed factionalized. I won't mention which players specifically because it won't help anyone but it's not looking good.
Some of the younger guys were crying after the USA game. Because of a combination of a multitude of factors including Iran's current political situation, I believe our youngsters are quite psychologically brittle. Of course Iranians are generally quite emotional anyway.
But the issue is that they weren't getting any strong support (I hung around the team bus), it's good to have someone to look after the mental aspect of things. The coach didn't even speak to the players after the match, you can see in my photo the body language as he is slumped in his chair - he just stayed there the whole time until the players left the ground.
We respond well with coaches who motivate and build a siege type mentality where the boys end up looking out for each other. This kind of factionalised set up won't be a problem in certain games (as we can rely on talent of our players in certain matches) but we will never step up until these glaring problems are addressed.
Marouf, Mousavi and Ebadipour are irreplaceable in our team. They must be on top of their game and play if we want to qualify to the Olympics and perform well there.
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