MHSN

Thanks for taking Iran serious but nah we could have a realistic chance in two other groups, specially Group C but no way in this group. and actually I'm not worried about Brazil and Italy. we play good against them here and there and it's OK to lose to these teams. I'm more worried about losing to other 4 teams which will be costly in the ranking. I don't even think about direct qualification here, I just think about damage control and not losing too much points.

is it possible to withdraw now ? I mean we got the toughest group possible. it's impossible to qualify and more importantly we will lose lots of ranking points here. not playing is better than losing I wish we could withdraw and focus on the Asian Games instead (more or less at the same time)

so he will lose the 2022 World bronze and that's the only harm ? I think the outcome isn't that terrible after all. even though I was starting to believe that Turkish report was fake. obviously not UWW already adjusted 2022 results but interestingly didn't publish anything about it. they probably think hiding a 3 months ban on one of their superstarts doesn't hurt.

@intoronto you notified me here, apparently I can't answer you back in that thread apparently Zangeneh received the 3rd caution in the last seconds and lost the match by 3 cautions disqualification despite leading the scoreboard. (which is confusing for those who are not 100% familiar with this sport) he is OK. not bad but not good either. once repesented Iran at the World U23 Champs and won a bronze medal with a dream draw. he will never win a world medal but probably good enough to qualify for the Olympics from Pan-Ams. (if don't run into USA and maybe Cuba) but I saw another familiar name, Mehdi Zeidvand who lost to Zangeneh in freestyle but just won the Greco competition. Zeidvand represented Iran in World senior Champs before. this is probably near the end of his career

Felix Sanchez (ex Qatar NT coach) is the new head coach of Ecuador national team that's interesting because he was supposed to be announced as our coach today but yet apparently Ecuadorian stole him on his way to Tehran I really fear for the worst, I think that mafia boss local coach will finally get what he always wanted. I just hope they hire someone else. anybody, no matter who. just not this guy. I can't convince myself to cheer for any team he coaches, even if that's our beloved "Team Melli"

not really a surprise. Iraq is always a tough opponent for us and to be honest they were the better team and deserved the win. and I wasn't even sure if Iran seriously tries for the win for some politically motivated reasons (I watched the match and I know they tried, they just lost to a better team) per rules if you are European or American you are allowed to mix sports with politics, but since we are not, Iraqis should pray to not get "that team" in their group. I assume they won't play too btw I don't know why exactly but Iran never gets good results in youth level football. Iran even failed to qualify for the Asian U20 Cup last time

that's interesting, still not sure how important it is, I saw lots of ups and downs in Iran-Saudi relationships in my lifetime. in dictatorships you can solve all the problems or start a new conflict in just one night. these kind of "relationships" usually don't stand for a long time. but it seems they both "listen" to China. at least for now I think the regime in Iran knows they are in deep trouble because of the situation (I mean the economy) inside the country and if they don't act the next wave of protests (which will happen sooner or later) will be more dangerous for them. and Saudis know if/when the war starts, Iranian missiles won't land on US, they will land in KSA. it's in their best interests to not fight the "cornered cat" They know they can't trust the Americans to protect them. I just hope something good came out of this for the poor people of Yemen, it seems everybody forgot them. after all they don't have blond hair and blue eyes. as an Iranian I feel ashamed when I know my country is somehow responsible for their suffering (even though the Iranian regime don't take orders from its people but still)

Yes I still have my doubts if the report is correct. because it's reported by the 3rd party, (not Italy and not UWW) sometimes these reports are simply wrong but it's reported by the most reliable Turkish newspaper and Turkey have some guys in highest positions of UWW and can get inside news probably sooner than the rest of the world, so ... it can be correct. but I hope it's not.

some Turkish news websites claim that Frank Chamizo failed the drug test at the 2022 World Champs (which will result in Soner Demirtas receiving the bronze medal) still I can't find any other source confirming that. but this is a big news. I mean Chamizo is not as good as he used to be but he is still a big name. if confirmed that will be a very unfortunate news.

I think it's different for Europe and Asia, based on this https://www.fiba.basketball/news/pre-olympic-qualifying-tournaments-a-new-path-to-paris-for-countries-that-don-t-reach-world-cup for Asia it will be , those 4 eliminated in the 1st round but for Europe this says "Four other teams will be eligible from the EuroBasket Pre-Qualifiers Second Round." looking at EB 2nd round qualifiers, won their groups and is the best runner-up. so I assume these 4 teams will participate alongside those 12 mentioned.

wow. how Argentina blew up a 17pts lead? it looked like an easy game for them at the beginning, but they just managed to lose it.

I didn't know we have someone who can score big points in Vault is it once in a lifetime ? we don't even have a proper gymnastics federation since 2021 but he got lucky Dolgopyat finished 4th, I don't know how Olfati could stand on the same podium with him.

Venezuela will be out only if they lose to CAN, (by more than 20 pts at least) and DOM lose to ARG + all teams in other groups (MEX,BRA and PUR) winning their games. I mean it looks a very unlikely scenario to me. they just have to lose by 19pts or less to qualify 100%.

dramatic finish in Georgia, they played with fire when they decided to miss that FT on purpose (to avoid overtime) after 2 series of FTs GEO missed last FTs (this time not intentionally) and Iceland could grab the quota by a single point but missed the last shot. ISL needed a 4pts win but they won by just 3.

no as far as I know, lots of Russian wrestlers switch country each year simply because they are too good in this sport and you can have only 1 in your own team. (and this is an amateur sport, if you don't wrestle at the Worlds/Olympics you are wasting your time) for example half of 97kg wrestlers in the World are from Russia (no kidding) simply because of Sadulaev. in wrestling there is a short window at the end of the year to switch country. if you miss that, you have to wait until the next year. all of those guys mentioned switched countries before December 2022 which means they did that in at least December 2021, before the war. all of their top guys (except Sadulaev) are active in their own local competitions (sometimes international), with good prize money.

It was "fun" watching our World and Olympic Champion losing 8-0 to a random guy but that's OK. that happens because of his careless style. it's better to lose like this here rather than in a major event. Geraei is still the best in the world but just not unbeatable. anybody can beat him if he isn't careful. other two guys ended up with gold medal. Dalkhani did good, he broke his hand last year (and couldn't defend his 2021 World title) IMO he did great considering he was out of the competition for a year. we have two great wrestlers in this weight, what a pity it's a non-Olympic weight and even if they move up a weight they will run into our Olympic Champion. Saravi at 97kg won the gold but he was far from convincing. I hope it was just lack of preparation. he is/was probably our safest bet for medal in world events.

I don't think the players can watch the other game, both games will be held at the same time 7:30 am here, I'm sure after today nobody will wake up early to watch this, probably except me Australia can't lose to Kazakhstan, even if they want to this is just not possible. the gap is just too much. this is no secret that Australia gifted the qualification to Iran by forfeiting that game in Tehran. I would be very mad at them if I was from Kazakhstan. Iran simply didn't deserve to qualify but I will take it, going to the WC is better than not going after all. our basketball is reaching its low still the team is not this bad. today they simply stopped trying in the 2nd Q. they beat the same Japanese team twice recently. and I believe Japan will take the Asian quota for the Olympics.

I'm glad I didn't switch to watch something else (our volleyball league) that last scene when Beyrami crossed the line was "fun" mostly the reaction of her teammates. "yay you got Eight, EIIIGHHHT"

we will have the 2nd ranking Series event of the year starting from tomorrow Ibrahim Moustafa Ranking Series Entry List https://uww.org/article/ibrahim-moustafa-ranking-series-entry-list UWW wrote an article about a possibly Kayaalp/Mirzazadeh (2022 WCh Final) but MZZ is not going to wrestle tomorrow he will wrestle at the Asian Championship instead (UWW should double check the entries with NFs before writing an article about a possible matchup) still Iran sent 3 (former) World Champions in Greco-Roman. plus a young team in freestyle.

I don't know this guy, never heard of his name until he landed on Tommy's show list of "refugees". and I think the whole article wrote his name wrongly. unless he has a super weird and unique surname (very unlikely) he should be Iman Mahdavi. I know absolutely nothing about him, therefore I don't know what's his case but he wasn't probably even a tier 10 wrestler here. the article says he is from the "shores of the Caspian Sea" which means north of the country, almost everybody trains wrestling in that region, (something like 80% of our freestyle team come from there) so to me he is just someone who did train wrestling but not a serious wrestler. (at least not in our standards which is quite high in this specific sport) I can write two pages about the situation in Iran but I assume that will bore you and everybody else since 1979 lots of people left the country and never came back (including more than half of my relatives , friends and classmates) of course most of them simply legally moved to somewhere else but lots of people are not qualified enough to find a job in a western country, therefore becoming a refugee is always the shortcut. based on my own knowledge/experience only 5% of Iranian refugees are real. the rest just fakes something to get out. (mostly they claim they changed their religion or they are homosexual, imagine a guy with wife and children claiming to be gay!!) once again I don't know this specific guy but I assume he also faked a story. it's easy to fake a bad story about this regime. they just make it easy, they are brutal, corrupt and whatever bad word you use. this guy is probably just an amateur but lots of our top athletes (or at least decent athletes) also did the same, specially after the recent crisis. some of them like our chess players had a legit reason, I don't blame them. some of them are just opportunists. you may hear lots of stories but this is very simple, the main problem is the economical situation in Iran, inflation, unemployment etc. Iranian Rial lost almost half of its value only and only in last 6 months. life is getting harder and harder for ordinary people. (Yep US/western sanctions are working perfectly) and IOC is giving free pass to the Olympics to any random Iranian athlete who simply asks for this. so why not ? that actually motivated some guys to leave the country, they can go do the Olympics without qualification.

today and tomorrow Iran is hosting a tournament called "7th World Freestyle Clubs Cup" but that's not recognized or sanctioned by UWW in short they just made up a tournament to satisfy their main sponsor. it's funny/humiliating to see our top wrestlers against random kids from Georgia or Kazakhstan. almost all matches finish 10-0 in the first period. but what makes this tournament a bit interesting is a team from Russia ! (that's probably why UWW doesn't recognize the event) that Russian team is consisted of Yarygin medalists. (guys like Gamzatov, Mamedov, Bizhoev, Zherbaev, Kurbanov) not Russia A team but still a tough challenge. this team is leading by the great Khadzhimurat Gatsalov, who is now the head coach of Russia national freestyle team. their previous coach had a weird/interesting history, Dzhambulat Tedeyev was the cousin of Elbrus Tedeyev (Olympic Champion from Ukraine and if I'm not wrong still the president of Ukrainian wrestling federation) he had this position for something like 20 years but for whatever reason they replaced him with Gatsalov.

I watched his QF against one of our guys (the weakest member of our Sabre team) and when he lost , my reaction was, ah this guy was terrible, you threw your best ever chance away (for a breakthrough in his career) really surprised to see the Polish guy won the whole thing at the end he looked amateur to my untrained eyes.

Today is the 44th anniversary of so-called "Islamic Revolution". I'm not old enough to witness those days myself, but the more I read and learn about those days, specially last 10 days, it's clear to me that things could easily go another way, but some small mistakes led us to the current disaster. putting the whole power in the hands of just one person is very dangerous. how the hell he could trick everybody into believing him. he didn't even try to be likeable. now 44 years later, we are at a dead end. no light at the end of the tunnel. they are not giving up an inch (because they think if they do, they will lose everything) and people are getting more angry and hopeless. not sure what will happen when this vengeful oldman dies, and we can't even count on that because it seems he is going to outlive everybody on the planet. but we are running out of time, I'm not even sure if the country exists few years from now.

I wish the best of luck for you, your family, your friends and your country. that's all I can say this is an unbelievable disaster , watching the news (which we do closely here) is really heartbreaking.

just a little bit ? I couldn't recognize half of them immediately . even wrestling