21 players invited for Palestine and Bahrain

PFDC – TEHRAN, Carlos Queiroz dropped Ashkan Dejagah and injured Masoud Shojaei but invited 21 players for the friendly match against Palestine (October 5) and the World Cup qualifier against Bahrain (October 11).

No specific reasons were cited why Dejagah will yet again not debut for Iran, however, in recent days issues about his military service arose.

Also missing is veteran striker Farhad Majidi for the two matches in Tehran’s Azadi stadium, who, not for the first time, announced his retirement, claiming that younger players should play instead of him.

Queiroz, however, vowed to still invite up to three further players in the next days, probably after Sepahan and Zob Ahan have played their league matches tomorrow.

Team Melli will start training on Sunday.

Below comes the roster.

Goalkeepers: Mehdi Rahmati, Shahab Gordan, Alireza Haghighi

Defenders: Khosro Heydari, Hossein Mahini, Hadi Aghily, Jalal Hosseini, Pejman Montazeri, Ehsan Hajsafi,  Mehrdad Pouladi

Midfield: Javad Nekounam, Andranik Teymourian,  Maziar Zare, Pejman Nouri,
Ali Karimi, Mojtaba Jabbari

Strikers: Karim Ansarifard, Milad Meydavoudi, Mohammad Ghazi, Gholamreza Rezaei, Mohammad-Reza Khalatbari