Iranian U19 trip to Germany causes confusion

PFDC – HERNE, While the Iranian national team are currently holding a training camp in Austria, the Iranian U19 team, contenders for the U19 Asian Cup title in October, are in Germany for their training camp at the same time.

Whereas the senior team already played Red Star Belgrade in Slovenia (1-1) on Wednesday and are set to face Hungarian club Vasas FC on Saturday and Serie A team S.S. Lazio on July 21, the youngsters, with domestic super talents Payam Sadeghian and Kaveh Rezaei, defeated amateur side Westfalia Herne 2-1 on Thursday and are now scheduled to meet KFC Uerdigen on Friday and second Bundesliga outfits Vfl Bochum on Saturday.

So far so good – hadn’t the Iranian Football Federation (IFF) and the Hamburg-based agency “Promotion Company” announced the Iranian U19 as the senior national team to the German clubs. According to Herne’s official homepage, “Promotion Company” employee Nikolas Weinhart even assured the meanwhile skeptical Herne officials that “this indeed is the real [Iranian] national team” and that “only a few players who already are with their clubs” would be missing. This of course is far from reality and it is unclear whether the “Promotion Company” are victims of misinformation by the IFF themselves or are part of a setup. Knowing the people in charge of the IFF the first option undoubtedly is the more likely one of course.

Further confusion among Iranian fans also arose, when some Iranian sources were recently reporting an agreement on a friendly match between Iran and Ukraine on August 11. However, Ukraine are hosting the Netherlands on the very same date and soon it became clear that again the U19 had been confused with the senior side who are scheduled to meet their Ukrainian counterparts on August 10.

So far, Team Melli have just a friendly match against Korea Republic confirmed for September 7 in Seoul and will also participate in the WAFF Championship 2010 in Amman, where they will take on Bahrain (September 24) and Oman (September 28) in group stage, before a possible semifinal and final.