Sepahan in dire straits in Asian Champions League

When will our football officials, be they in the IFF or the clubs realize the desperate need for keeping up with the times and especially the need for a capable set of individuals who are competent in a foreign language and know their way around the internet and official sites like AFC or FIFA. I’m referring to the shameful and tragic elimination of our Omid team qualifiers where they simply forgot or didn’t bother to check the suspension/eligibility list of players prior to their game and foolishly turned a precious away 1-0 win in Iraq to a disgraceful 3-0 loss which resulted in the disheartened and defeated display in Tehran in the return game. We thought with that disgrace our officials would have woken up and made sure such nonsense would never happen again. Enter Sepahan’s quarterfinal game in the Asian Champions League against Qatar’s Al-Sadd and they include Rahman Ahmadi as their keeper (transferred in from Persepolis at the end of last season). They notch up a satisfactory 1-0 home win that gives them a slight upper hand in the tie. But as soon as the game was over, the Qatari officials lodge a complaint to the AFC regarding Ahmadi’s ineligibility due to the two yellow cards he received while he was playing for Persepolis, last season in the very same competition!


Sepahan may yet get away with it as the AFC officials in their list of suspended and ineligible players of the game did not include Ahmadi’s name (Not the first time we see AFC drops the ball and prove to us it is a far cry away from its European and American counterparts). But it still doesn’t take away from the fact that despite the Omid team fiasco, we have not learned our lessons and we continue to swim in the sea of ignorance and unprofessionalism. No matter how high the salaries and contracts are in our football! We only “pretend” to have a professional set up and league with such absurd amounts of money changing hands. Underneath that fast-fading superficial luster, we are as amateurish as they come!

Ps. – Speaking of ACL, we cant not make a note of Zob-Ahan’s precious away point from South Korea. With Zob-Ahan keeping a toehold on the tie with a precious away goal, and if Sepahan gets lucky and puts the blame on the AFC for its negligence in the matter of suspension list, our chances of having an all Iranian semifinal, and thereby, a Finalist (second time for both Esfahani clubs) is still very much alive.

The real story behind our Omid elimination

After the miserable showing by the whole Iranian team and staff, I was ready to rant about how pathetic our “stars” like Ansarifard, Afshin, Hajsafi, … performed and how they displayed a (lack of) quality seen only in back allies of provinces in Iran rather than a national team. I was down and wrote on and on about how Mansourian’s inexperience got exposed when none of his substitutions made any impact on the last 30 minutes of the game. I screamed about the lack of playmaker and any sort of creativity in the middle. I wrote and wrote about how idiotic and immature our players were with their insistence on back heels and unorthodox passing when the more straight forward passes would have sufficed. I remarked on the easy chances and goals we conceded.

And I wrote in anger and dismay … until I came across this little gem of a news:
Omid’s midfielder Jalal Kamyabinia, was ineligible and barred from play in our away game in Iraq by AFC.
But here’s the twist: Due to IFF’s incompetence and their failure in conveying this news to the staff, Kamyabynia did play in that game and AFC announced they ruled that game in favor of Iraq by a scoreline of 3-0.

This catastrophic news was brought to the staff and later on, to the team’s attention who understandably lost all their hopes and drive and apparently some of the lads actually wept in the dressing room. Nobody can bear such a twist of fate, from a 1-0 ahead in an away game to a 3-0 loss in a matter of seconds.

Click here for Mansourian's press conference and remarks

This put everything in context and made sense of all the poor passing, rushed, emotional hurried game, and generally the whole miserable performance. Now I am left with my anger, but directed at the ever incompetent and frankly, brainless federation of ours rather than the poor lads whose legs must have felt like lead, trying to claw their way back from a 3-0 deficit.

And this completes the infamy of Kafashian’s federation who has failed in each and every major tournament Iran participated in. Incompetence bordering on criminal! Enough is enough, Mr. Kafashian. High time you took away your misery-ridden shadow of incompetence away from our football, once and for all.

You know what is the worst part of it all? It's that the IFF had the AFC notice of Kamyabikia's suspension FOUR MONTHS in advance of the Iraq game!!! Such is the extent of IFF's pathetic incompetence.

Omid Team begins its Olympic qualifying campaign

The roster for the upcoming Olympics qualifier against Iraq has been announced by the Omid team coaches and it looks quite a comprehensive list with perhaps one or two worthy players missing. But nonetheless, this is a very capable team that with enough support from the Iranian authorities, especially the interior ministry and military in allowing the exit and travel of the under 23 years players (God only knows how many times our Olympic teams have suffered from players not given permission to leave the country due to military service rules), they stand a decent chance of advancing to the next stage of the Asian region qualifiers.

The list is;
Hamed Lak, Mohamad Mazaheri, Mohamad KhalilAzad
Milad Fakhredini, Reza Talabeh, Shoja Khalilzadeh, Rasoul Kor, Abolhassan Jafari, Mehrdad Jamaati, Ehsan Hajsafi, Siamak Korushi, Ali Zeinali, Saman Aghazamani, Ali Marzban, Kamal Kamyabinia, Yaqoub Karimi, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Mohamadreza ZeinalKheiri, Hamid AliAsgar, Mohsen Mosalman, Karim Ansarifad, Iman Musavi, Arash Afshin, Mehdi Daghaghele, and Masoud Ebrahimzadeh.

The only name I find missing in the team is Bakhtiar Rahmani, Foolad’s creative playmaker who had a very good season in the league. However, I see enough talent in the team to manage the two leg tie and come out on top.

They come off a 2-1 friendly win against the Syrian Olympics team which should muster up enough confidence to meet the Iraqi side which by all accounts should be very similar to the Syrians; a tough, physical team with enough skills to push any team. The away game is scheduled on Sunday 19th of June in Iraq with the home game in Tehran on Thursday 23rd.