With Mehdi Taremi's miss at the end of the duel of the 3rd round of the group stage against the favored Portugal, the Iranians missed the passage to the knockout stage at the World Cup in Russia four years ago. They won four points against Morocco (1:0), Spain (0:1) and Portugal (1:1).
Next month in Qatar, in their sixth appearance at the world championships, the "Persian stars" hope to finally take a historic step - to reach the round of 2018. XNUMX's performance remains the best yet...
And then, as well as at the first winter World Cup, the Iranians will be led from the bench by the famous Portuguese Carlos Queiroz, who returned to the bench after a huge storm, arguments and strange decisions in the Iranian Football Association.
Before that, the road to Qatar was blazed by a not so well-known Croatian, the former coach of Rijeka, Dragan Skočić, with a record performance in the qualifications. With him, the "Persian stars" won 30 out of a possible 25 points in the qualifiers, which is the best result ever in the qualification cycles of the Iranian football team. Skočić, however, was dismissed at the beginning of July, he was reinstated a week later, and then the elections for the president of the Association were awaited in August.
In September, it was finally assessed that Skočić was not an attractive enough name to lead the national team in such a big competition - Mehdi Taj, who returned to the position of president of the Federation, fulfilled his "pre-election promise" and returned Keiroš, the coach with the longest tenure on the bench of Iran . He led Iran in his first term from 2011 to 2019, participated in two World Cups.
The 69-year-old Portuguese will have a tough job to bring Iran into the round of XNUMX from Group B, which also includes England, Wales and the United States of America.
The Iranians usually play in a 4-1-4-1 system, but insiders claim that Keiros will not hesitate to play in a 4-3-3 formation, especially since this generation has great strikers. And traditionally, Iran has robust and physically strong players in the attack, such as the living "monument" of Iranian Asian football, the legendary Ali Daei, who until recently was the world record holder for the number of goals for representative matches (109), but Cristiano Ronaldo moved that performance as well. (117).
And not only physically strong and robust, like Mehdi Taremi from Porto, or the Omonia striker who also scored against Manchester United this fall, Karim Ansarifard. Namely, there is the refined Sardar Azmoun, known by the nickname "Iranian Messi", a player who is equally dangerous in the position of a classic striker and when he operates from the second plan. He is fast, quick, reads the game very well and shoots with both feet. Bayer Leverkusen forward scored 64 goals in 41 appearances for the "Persian Stars". He is also the most expensive footballer in the team and according to Transfermarkt he is worth 22 million euros.
And what are the forecasts for Iran at the upcoming biggest show? Bookmakers give four per invested euro for passing from the group, winning the World Cup is multiplied by a coefficient of 350. Despite the many good players, the biggest star is the coach Keiros. From the position of long-time assistant to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, the Portuguese sat on the bench of the most trophy-winning club in the world, Real Madrid, and led the famous "Galacticos". On two occasions, he was the coach of his native Portugal, he led the national teams of South Africa, Colombia and Egypt, with whom he failed to reach the World Cup in Qatar, because Senegal was better in the penalty shootout. Queiroz, however, is coming to Qatar, thanks to the Iranians...
However, the fundamental question is whether he will be able to reconcile the dressing room, since the younger players, led by Azmun, were in favor of Skočić leading the team at the World Cup, while the older ones, together with Taremi, advocated only the Iranian coaching staff. In the group they play with the biggest political enemies, America and Great Britain (England + Wales).
The Iranians have never played against England or Wales, but they did with the USA selection, because they won 1998:2 in the group stage of the World Cup in France in 1. It was a historic celebration in Tehran and other Iranian cities...
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