Iranican

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Team Melli: Is there Still Hope?

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(Updated on May 3, 2009: One of our friends made the video above, a good overview of what happened.)

As most of you are well aware, Team Melli, in another utterly lackluster performance, lost to Saudi Arabia 2-1 on Saturday. We showed some promise early on, with aggressive, crisp passing that reminded me of the Team Melli of old. But then we soon regressed to our lazy, content-to-stay-back-and-not-pressure-their-goal-at-all-while-holding-a-precarious-one-goal-lead previous form. And pretty much every player (except maybe Rahmati) held some responsibility – even Masoud Shojaei, who scored our lone goal.

Shortly after the game, Ali Daei was sacked. A predictable and wise move for sure, but could it distract us from the deeper problems with Iranian football, such as the lack of team chemistry, the embarrassing defending, and Team Melli’s tendency to play very conservatively when holding leads?

Who should replace Daei? A domestic coach like Afshin Ghotbi or Mohammad Mayeli Kohan, as the IFF seems to be favoring? Or a more experienced (and, many would argue, better) foreign coach, such as Philippe Troussier?

And what are your thoughts on our chances of still qualifying, with three matches left? It will certainly be a tough task, but certainly not impossible. The 3rd place spot looks very makeable, although if we do end up as 3rd in our group, we would still have to survive a playoff with the 3rd place team from the other Asian qualifying group (and if we win, then a playoff with New Zealand). And which team does that look like it’ll be? None other than our old foe, Bahrain!

Let me know what you all think. It’s gonna be a long two months until Team Melli’s next match…

-Kevin

12 comments

  1. Having seen the game from the Stadium, I have to say I’m first most disappointed in the crowd, second the players, third the IFF, and finally Daei.

    I don’t agree that the firing of Ali Daei was a wise move at this point. Maybe it wasn’t wise to recruit Daei to begin with, given his limited coaching experience and his very recent retirement from Team Melli making him the coach of his former team-mates, but with less than a year at work and only 3 more games to go, I doubt any coach would make things better for Iran. Unless it was Daei himself that was causing the bad chemistry which from the team interviews after the Iran-KSA game, it did not seem to be the case, as the players were hinting to not have Daei fired.

    A very informative analysis was done by “90”, my favorite Iranian program. Both analysts mentioned that the number one factor contributing to Iran’s performance was the lack of quality in the games leading up to the KSA game. In terms of numbers, we have plenty of games, but we did not have a game against any teams strong enough to be compared to KSA.

    A second analysis which was done by Adel himself the host of “90” was the pattern at which most of the Iranian Club teams had lost to the other Asian clubs, matching Team Melli’s performance against KSA, up by one then losing the game by a goal. So this is not something that’s specific to Daei’s coaching or Team Melli’s performance. This is about the way Iranians Play soccer, or maybe it’s about the Iranian culture altogether, both of which can not be undone by a mere coaching strategy overnight, but has to be worked on over time.

    Lastly, what the IFF did unfortunately only re-enforced the shortsighted culture of the Iranian soccer fans, at least those who attended Azadi. After only 30 some minutes into the game, the fans started taunting team Melli, specifically Ali Daei, shouting “Alieh Karimi, Alieh Karimi…”. Granted, after Iran’s first goal the Stadium exploded with cheers of joy, but it only took one goal for the stadium to quiet down completely and then come back up against the team again with shouts like “Daei Haya Kon, Team Melli ro Raha Kon”, “Daei yadet nareh, Karimi sarvareteh”, and “Daei bayad beraghseh”. The crowd proved that they are not really fans of the Team Melli but just fans of a team that can provide them with satisfactory results. In a tough time like like after the lucky and unexpected equalizing goal by KSA, the only thing the crowd could do to help would have been to continue their chants to support team Melli, but unfortunately they did just the opposite.

    It is tough to be beat by KSA at home, but with reactions by the IFF like this one, to sack the head coach, it is unlikely we will ever be able to solve problems deep within Iranian soccer much less the Iranian culture. It’s easy to pass a few motions, point fingers, blame and fire one person for the loss to KSA and mark it as “unacceptable”. This may have somewhat saved the face of Iranian soccer after the loss, however it’s only good for “saving face” over what has already happened, and not good for anything we can hope for, for the long term.

  2. Wow… who will be the coach now?
    It didn’t take 2 weeks, the and guy resigned and guess what, over what supporters of another club team chanted… It doesn’t matter what they said, these fools need to grow up and stop listening to adolescent chants.

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