MHSN

AFC Best player of the year is a bench player in Qatar NT

interesting since he never played outside of Asia. it seems you know more than what I was expecting about Asian football well he left his club Persepolis to join a Turkish club Rizespor but before even start of the season he got home sick (or whatever else) and came back to Persepolis. (it was also in middle of Turkey coup against Erdogan, so he was probably afraid of his safety there) of course the Turkish club sued him and FIFA badly punished both him and Persepolis. and since PP is the most popular club here, Rouhani called Erdogan for help and he asked Rizespor to withdraw the case and they did. even that softened things but still FIFA punished Taremi and the club for falsifying evidence and lying to FIFA . Taremi's 4 month ban ended before the World Cup so he could play in Russia. but his club paid the prize for longer. first the news about Taremi's suspension came out one night before 2017 AFC CL semifinal match vs Al-Hilal, they lost that match 4-0 and then FIFA banned them for signing new players for 2 transfer windows and Persepolis had to play 2018 AFC CL final with only 11-12 players available. you can imagine how much Persepolis fans blame him for not winning both 2017 and 2018 continental titles. even though that was mostly club's fault, not him. they told him to lie but he is the one taking the fall. there is a notorious interview with him right after his suspension (the night before 2017 semifinal) where he says "things happen for a reason, surely that's for a greater good" (that was the best translation I could) and he is still known as Mr "Greater good"

Interesting match between Iraq and Vietnam. some stupid defensive mistakes plus a very nice free kick at the end to win the match for Iraq. Vietnam isn't a bad team. but they were weak on air. I expect Iran to take advantage of this as we have tall strikers. I think 3rd place team in this group most probably won't have more than 3 pts. probably not one of the best 3rd placers to qualify for the knockout round.

You put Taremi in your fantasy team ? that's surprising because I assume he is unknown for non-Iranian fans. to me he is very talented but also a bit stupid. (more than just a bit actually ) personally I was expecting him to be our "star" in this tournament but you never can be sure about him, he is like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. btw he is a trouble maker, Iranian president Rouhani had to call Recep Tayyip Erdogan to solve a problem Taremi caused and I'm not joking.

We probably deserved more than just 1 yellow card in first half. so many reckless tackles . which is stupid when you are 3-0 up. really glad for Taremi scoring twice, I was somehow expecting him to be our star in this tournament. and he really needed these goals to gain confidence. he was under huge huge pressure after missing that 96th minute chance vs Portugal and that header vs Spain. I just hope Azmoun can score today as well. he also needs this badly. feel sorry for Yemen. they played good for 10-15 minutes. they just collapsed after the first goal.

Kyrgyzstan dominated China in first half. they were in control before that "accident" . that was extremely stupid. never saw such stupid own goal before (i'm sure it happened before, just I can't remember)

lol no but they are saved by the stupidest own goal ever

huge win for Jordan . even though as thepharoah said Australia deserved a 100% penalty in the first half. but Jordan played great with passion and played their heart to win this match. Australia with something like 75% ball possession couldn't create much chances. now it's very hard for Australia to win the group. PS: I never saw Jordan with another GK. this Amer Shafi guy is Jordan's GK since forever.

oh no. actually in that specific match there was a penalty for Iran in first half that referee didn't see. but I'm talking about the heroic Iran-Australia match in 1997. the whole story of that match was unbelievable. the way Iran came to that last chance (Iran had 3 chances to qualify but wasted them all in dramatic ways) against a much much better team (Australia finished 2nd in Confederations Cup only behind Brazil) and Australia deserved to score 5-6 goals only in first half. but they just relaxed after 2-0 and the miracle happened for Iran. but our first goal was clearly offside in a weird situation that nobody even noticed that during the match. that was indeed the biggest match of our football history. they still somehow celebrate that day in Iran calling it "Melbourne miracle". and still talk about that. still make documentaries about that match even after more than 20 years. (nobody talks about USA match after 1-2 years) if you watch the entire match that was nothing but a miracle for Iran. and that match changed the Iranian football which was dying at the time. and not just football but the whole sports got lots of media attention since then and you can see a jump in Iran's performance at the Olympics since 2000. that was probably the only time in my life that I saw the whole country ( I mean 100%) celebrating something together. PS: who knows maybe with VAR we could beat Argentina in 2014 but still I won't exchange that Australia match with anything else. not even winning the world cup

only for the knockout rounds. even though I'm not a big fan of VAR but that's probably necessary in AFC more than anywhere else. the whole story of AFC Asian Cup would be different if we had VAR in previous tournaments. the ref didn't call it himself. that guy behind the goal told him to do that. of course you always can justify such penalties. they call exactly the same penalty with VAR in Juventus Sampdoria match few days ago. but as far as I know the hand was right next to the body. that wasn't a penalty IMO. his hand was in natural position. PS: we football fans probably want VAR when our favorite team gets hurt by bad officiating but when I watch a match as neutral fan, I really don't like VAR to stop the match for few minutes and for example disallowing a goal after a long celebration ! and beside the biggest match of Iran football history happened with a referee mistake (in favor of Iran) . so I guess I can live without VAR

That was a cheap penalty helping UAE to at least get a point. I still think UAE will win the group.the winner of this group won't face any of top 5 AFC teams before the semifinal (of course only if they all win their groups) Bahrain is the most dangerous underrated team in Asia. everybody always underestimates them before every tournament and they sometimes surprise. we in Iran know that better than anybody else because the worst memory of our football history comes from a Bahrain match. I didn't know even a single player from this Bahrain squad but I knew they won't be easy for UAE. they just have no experience outside of Asia, they were close to the World Cup twice. and both times they were the better team and missed so many chances (against Trinidad in 2006 and NZ in 2010) and lost the World Cup spot only because of lack of international experience. UAE was far from impressive without their star Omar Abdelrahman. still you never can count the host team out. things like that penalty can always happen for the host team. specially in such a terrible organization like AFC. probably the worst in the world. if you check the schedule , in all 6 groups the two seeded teams will play the last group match ! which is stupid IMO. I think in most (not all) tournaments they decide the order of matches by draw. but here all top seeds will start with the pot 4 team in their group. then pot 3 and finally pot 2. which means we will have so many meaningless match in the last group day. or some teams may even lose intentionally to change their path in knockout round.

at first I thought maybe they made a mistake and I checked the Ski federation website . no mistake. the distance was the same (both classical) and the time result is the same as what I read in the Iran federation website we are talking about few days ago I can't remember any big weather change in that day (I might be wrong though) even though I live a bit away from that place in Tehran mountains. they only posted one or two pics from the 2nd day where the weather looks perfect .so I have no idea the only answer is probably the snow/weather condition. or maybe someone made a mistake about the distance and they had to go few more kilometers

James Harden made losing a bet today morning so I won't forgive him for that but seriously his last 3pointer in overtime was just wow. with 2 players defending him !

we had our first snow of this winter today

I tried to explode them all as fast as possible. when you go fast you usually miss one or two

Iran had some interesting results in this World Blitz/Rapid Championship. Sara Khadem-al-Sharieh won two silver medals in both Rapid and Blitz competition. I assume that's Iran's first ever medals in a FIDE senior World Championships. but the most interesting result came from 15 years old Alireza Firouzja. he was leading the competition in both events for so many rounds. even though he blew out his lead in both of them but still a 6th place finish in Rapid event in such a high level competition was great for a teenager. (where he was somthing like 170th in the ranking order before the competition !!) watched his match against the great Magnus Carlsen and he was terrible. probably too nervous facing his idol

I was checking some Asian Games results and I found something very weird and of course interesting. there is a guy from Sri Lanka who represented his country in 3 different sports in the Asian Games and by different I mean really different ! his name is Mahamadaachchi Sajeev De Silva (born 11 Dec 1991) first he participated in Rowing at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. last year he tried his chance in Cross-Country Skiing in Sapporo and this year he was participating in Archery in Jakarta ! I wonder what will be his next sport ? Judo or Modern pentathlon maybe PS: I did my homework. he is surely the same person.

I vote for satisfactory . it wasn't great but also not bad either. I had low expectations this year because of financial situation in Iran. Asian Games was the main event of the year for me. and Iran won more or less the same number as 2014 despite having much lower budget. and some favorite events being dropped out by the organizers. there were some bad results of course but in general the whole competition was OK. Iran got some great results in YOG finishing 7th in medal table !! but I guess we can't take YOG seriously. but still. World Wrestling Championship was a total disaster but Iran won 3 gold medals in Olympic events in other Olympic sports. that will be OK if we repeat that in Tokyo. no much in team sports. volleyball was disastrous and our football team couldn't pass the first round at the World Cup. even though at least they didn't ashamed us in Russia. I'm not that optimistic for 2019 which is important for the Olympic qualification . the financial situation is not getting better and most federations have to work with a budget one-third of what they had 2 years ago. beside that there are 10 federations here without a president some of them are important sports.

Karimi turned down so many offers from Europe. he just wanted easy money in UAE. he went to Bayern only because he was under huge pressure here for being lazy and not being ambitious. he just wanted to show he can play in biggest leagues and biggest teams. he had a good start actually but got injured and never came back properly. only if Karimi had half of Daei's passion for the game or his determination ... lol on that match I was on the other side oh come on, Italy hit the post twice by Gilardino and Zambrotta . Germany had few chances playing at home but Italy deserved it more. btw I posted Iran 23-man squad for the Asian Cup in Iran national thread. Jahanbakhsh is in but Gholizadeh and Ezzatollahi are going to miss the tournament.

having a round to eliminate just one athlete doesn't make sense unless they keep the scores for the 2nd round. I mean using the total score to detemine the finalists. they can also having all 5 athletes having 2 rounds. because I agree only 1 would be really a shame

I think I exactly asked for such change in Kata scoring system. having a number as the final score is much better than just a 5-0 or 4-1 which doesn't show the real difference between two competitors. the new Kata format is also interesting. what if we have less than 16 competitors ? we still should have those 1st/2nd rounds or we can go directly to the pre-final round . what about the Olympics with only 10 competitors ? 2 groups of 5 and then after one round of Kata, group winner to the final ? and finally 3 minutes competition for women. even though I still prefer 4 minutes for both gender but still this is better than only 2 minutes !!! still no extra time but positive changes in general.

Iran's final squad for 2019 AFC Asian Cup in UAE GK Alireza Beiranvand ( Persepolis) Amir Abedzadeh ( Maritimo) Payam Niazmand ( Sepahan) DF Vouria Ghafouri ( Esteghlal) Majid Hosseini ( Trabozanspor) Pejman Montazeri ( Esteghlal) Hossein Kanaanizadegan ( Machinesazi) Ramin Rezaeian ( Al-Shahania) Morteza Pouraliganji ( Eupen) Milad Mohammadi ( Akhmet Grozny) MF Ehsan Hajsafi ( Tractorsazi) Vahid Amiri ( Trabozanspor) Masoud Shojaei ( Tractorsazi) Omid Ebrahimi ( Al-Ahli) Rouzbeh Cheshmi ( Esteghlal) Ashkan Dejagah ( Tractorsazi) Ahmad Nourollahi ( Persepolis) Mehdi Torabi ( Saipa) FW Mehdi Taremi ( Al-Gharafa) Sardar Azmoun ( Rubin Kazan) Karim Ansarifard ( Nottingham Forest) Saman Ghoddos ( Amiens) Alireza Jahanbakhsh ( Brighton) Only 4 changes comparing to the World Cup squad. Ghafouri, Kanaanizadegan, Nourollahi and the reserve GK Niazmand. we are missing some injured players, two of them are key players, Ali Gholizadeh (Charleroi) and Saeid Ezzatollahi (Reading). we had high hope on Gholizadeh, I would replace anybody else in the squad with him Ezzatollahi was also important player , his replacement Ali Karimi (Esteghlal) also got injured and missed the tournament. another injured player is Kaveh Rezaei (Brugge) even though I'm not sure if he would make the final squad. Queiroz doesn't believe much in him.

Yeah my Arabic isn't that bad Karimi was a great player and probably the best player we ever had but he also wasted his talent because of laziness and his stubborn personality. bad luck ? no we are just bad at controlling emotions. we won couple of matches on penalties in 3rd place matches when there is no pressure. in those 5 matches, in two of them we were down to 10 men early in the match and I understand they couldn't go all attack but there is one thing the other 3 matches have in common which is unbelievable. in 1984, 1996 and 2007 our STUPID coaches changed the GK in 120th minute only for the penalties and that never worked. they were OK with the draw and penalties even though Iran was the better team in all of those matches and had to push more for the winning goal. one of the matches I never forgot is Italy-Germany in 2006, Lippi knew his chance will be very slim against Germans on the penalties, he replaced Camoranesi with Iaquinta and Perrotta with Del Piero in extra time. playing 4 strikers in extra time against Germany when the score is 0-0 was too risky but that's the difference between great coaches and average coward coaches.