The future is bright for Iran enthuses Queiroz

With defenders Pejman Montazeri and Hashem Beikzadeh ruled out of the tournament in Australia due to injury, Queiroz chose to field untested duo Morteza Pouraliganji and Vouria Ghafouri in defence at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.

And despite the pair having only a handful of friendly caps between them, they performed admirably alongside Mehrdad Pooladi and Seyed Jalal Hosseini as goals in either half from Ehsan Hajsafi and Masoud Shojaei secured victory for the three-time continental champions.

“We came here with some limitations, but when you play the Asian Cup which is the most important competition for nations in Asia and you come here and play the opening match against Bahrain and you put on the pitch two kids who have never played an official match like centre-back Morteza, he is not even a centre back, and you play like that, you must be happy,” said former Portugal coach Queiroz.

“We need to make decisions according to the reality. We lost a couple of players who are not here, so if they are not here, we need to make decisions with the players we trust and believe they are ready to serve the national team.

“When I arrived in Iran we had 12-14 players who were ready to play in the national team. One player with 90 caps and the second player with zero caps. Today things have changed after four years and the work that we have done has started to prepare the new options and new players that will be the future of the Iranian national team.”

Iran had made a slow start to the opening Group C contest, but after Hajsafi netted a sensational opener in first half stoppage time, Shojaei sealed the win with 19 minutes remaining.

“The game was difficult as we expected in the first game and Bahrain started better than us in the first 10 minutes until we were able to settle down our game,” added Queiroz, who had the luxury of withdrawing Shojaei, Reza Ghoochannejhad and Ashkan Dejagah inside the final 15 minutes ahead of Thursday’s meeting with PERSIAN Gulf Cup champions Qatar in Sydney.

“After 10 minutes we started to put the ball on the grass and we started to create opportunities and we should have scored earlier with the Dejagah one-on-one with the goalkeeper. But after the first 10 minutes, I think we controlled the game and created the best opportunities in the game to score and I think we deserved to win the game.

“It was a good win, but it was always difficult as the team from Bahrain always played with a positive mind, and even when they were losing 2-0, they always tried to attack and they always tried to surprise us moving forward.”