In an interesting turn of events, Ali Karimi has rejected his call-up to Team Melli last week. Although there were whispers in the Iranian media of his planned rejection of the offer, due to ill will stemming from his five-month suspension from Iran’s national football (soccer) team, the news still comes as a big surprise from the former Bayern Munich striker.
In response, Ali Daei has criticized the move and vowed never to invite Karimi again.
How much will this take away from Team Melli’s concentration ahead of their important World Cup qualifier match against North Korea on Wednesday?
-Kevin
1 comment
Interesting dynamic,
Although I don’t doubt the unorganized operation of Team Melli, specially at the beginning of Ali Daei’s coaching time, I don’t believe it is consistent with the written or unwritten codes of being part of a team to publicly express it. We can stretch this a bit and pretend an American soldier on duty, goes on record and says the US Army is unorganized and ineffective. Even if the US Army was unorganized, that soldier would have been dismissed from the army for good without any benefits or pay. In the army or any American Team, this does not happen even if the Team really is disorganized, and I would attribute this to the culture of Team Play as well as the good coaching about communication and Team Play that is provided outside of Iran.
I think Karimi’s a great individual player, but with his rejection he proves along with his one-man-show-runs that he’s not a team player. So Ali jan, if you’re reading this, it may not be too late to learn that the team always comes before your self centered egotistical childish-food-strike-like syndromes. With this move your club career also took a hit as far as any self-respected team is concerned, so have fun playing for Persepolis.