I think we have made a few steps in the right direction but we are still too far away from battling the other teams for the next Asian Cup. However I believe ( or hope) that there will be no such an embarrassment as the one we've seen in previous Asian Cup and WC qualifiers. I agree with you on Japan, they're the only team that kept their level of competitiveness and improved significantly while teams like Korea and Australia have not been convincing when they played non-Asian teams. I think Jordan deserve to be in the "interesting" teams list.
I don't count on Jordanians, but Omanis are another hope for Arabs. We, Persians, only consider KSA as our true rival in West Asia. Iraqis are good too, if they work on their organization and management. I am waiting for a day to defeat you in your best shape.
I think Japan is in the top level, Australia and Korea are on the next one, Iran, Uzbekistan, Iraq (and Saudi if they played a good tournament) are on the same level. Let's see how some of these teams perform in the next World Cup.
I don't know about Australians, but Iran is definately better than South Korea. We defeated them at both Tehran and Seoul for QF round. At the moment Japan is the best Asian team. Iran and Australia are at the next level. South Korea and Uzbekistan at the same level as well. Then Oman/Iraq/Jordan/KSA and Qatar.
I firmly beleive KSA, Iran and Iraq were the best and a huge competion to Japan and SK untill our FAs ruined it . I dont see coming back to that stage in near time now. Our youth system is simply pathetic. We could do any thing great in WAFF and alike competions so how can we trust this youths to lead the team in near future.
What did really happen to KSA? I admire some of your players such as Navaf Atenyaf, Mohhamad Adduaya, Sami Jaber, Aaid al Aveiran, and Hussain Abdul ghani Suleymani. Specially your famous goalkeeper. Why did your team go down? Do not worry only Japan is ruling in Asia now. You can catch up with the rest any time if you find the right talents. You guys have a huge financial backers, so you can hire any world class manager.
To be honest guys I think KSA has improved since their Gulf Cup exit last year, but they are not on the level their FIFA ranking is pretending to be. They qualified over a really poor Iraq side, a weak China side and Indonesia. So we will have to wait and see how their Asian Cup campaign turns up.
Haha...Our FA is bankrupt and thats official....And world class managers ...I dont think so that might have helped Saudi any time..Rijkaard is the best exapmle...I may agree some infamous coaches have become great managers when they have coached any team in Saudi NT or club..Calderon, Macala to name a few...
Hiring world class coaches and sacking them doesn't help anyways. You have to invest on the youth. Saudi league is one of the strongest of Asia, so the NT can benefit from that. Good luck in the Asian Cup and future tournaments
As a Iranian I can comfortably say Iran is not better than South Korea. In terms of individual talent we might be on the same level and in terms of coaching we might be better than them right now but in terms of football federation , league , stadiums , youth system Iran is way behind. Sure we beat them twice but we got extremely lucky , those games could of easily been lost . If we didn’t have Carlos as our coach we would have had the same fate as 2010 and even with a top notch coach we struggled. I don’t think you can measures success for Iran by beating other Asian counter parts. You have to look at the bigger picture , how many players do we have that regularly play in Europe? How is our youth system? How many good stadiums do we have in Iran? The standards of the IPL and why is the quality so bad and why are almost all the team in debt. Iran right now is 3rd or 4th at best in Asia just because of our coach and some of the individual talents we have without those we wouldn’t even be in top 10 in Asia.
As you said some of our clubs are in trouble and that is because of government middle in the sport. If the sanctions start to lift in next 6 months then Iran will be back on the track. You need to accept the fact that it has been the Iranian talents that pushed our team forward and not the FA. Some of our old football players like Mansourian and other respectful coaches have been sacrificing their time to train good players at youth level and now it is giving result. I am not as pessimist that you are. I can see a good future for our football. If the government come to it sense and deal with the 5+1 group then our economy will grows as well and can support better quality league. Martian Gulf forever
The problem is that you fired Riijkard too soon. KSA must have more patience. Although the new coach seems to be working out.
Dont want to get off-topic and political, but the problem is not just sanctions. The problem is that our economy and every major institution (including sports) is controlled by a bunch of corrupt Pasdaran. Its like a mafia running our country. Its the same with KSA. Both Iran and KSA are corrupt as hell. Government involvement is what is keeping both Iran and Saudi Arabia down in football.
Stating the obvious! Have you seen my comments at Iran forum? when making money hard (our current situation) the corrupts circle around only sources of money (government subsidized federations and clubs). If the sanction get lifted some of these people will go after other business to make more money and leave it alone. The rest I agree. Govt should hands off from all sporting institutions. Back to the topic: Why did KSA FA got bankrupt ?
Responsing to your quieries - I was for the first time with FA to fire a coach. He was given a lot of time to develop a team which other coaches did not. Calderon joined and did wonders and same with Jose Peserio too but not wonders i might say. FA is bankcrupt due to lack of fundings from the promoters and obviously hiring and firing coaches like they are nothing. Do you guys think our current coach is a selection of FA...Not its not..Money selected him not the FA.
There is another issue and it's a massive source of income in other countries, the TV deal for the local competitions. There was a strange decision from the higher authorities to give the Sport governmental channels the broadcasting rights for free. The league has grown big interest and a a lot of sport network (even non-Saudi ones) were interested to sign a long term deal but nothing happened. I'm not sure how much exactly were the offers but the total can easily be +300 million riyals a season.
It was worse than that, they stripped aljazeera sports (or was it Abudhabi I can't remember anymore) of the rights and gave it to Saudi TV. Bread and circuses (football in this case). That's the response to the Arab spring. Now they're trying to get new TV deals for both the national team and the league, but I doubt they'll get the money they ask for when there's the risk of having it taken away due to political interference.
Yeah Saudi Arabia got really pissed at Qatar and Al-Jazeera because their broadcasts heavily promoted the fall of Egyptian president Mubarak, and Ben Ali in Tunisia. And they favoured the Muslim Brotherhood to take power in those two countries.
The league broadcasting rights contract was expired while Aljazeera was the owner after buying them from ART, they didn't reach an agreement for a new deal. I don't think Aljazeera was as interested in having the broadcasting lights as Abudhabi or Dubai Sport for example, or even Line Sport (local Sport channel for those who aren't familiar with it). I just think there is probably more stupidity than actual political reason to give the rights for the Saudi Channels.
Ok so you are blaming the financial problems in Iranian football/sports on the sanctions which is a typical behavior now in days for some Iranians no in days. But you don’t seem to understand that we’ve always had financial issues in sports , long before the sanctions so don’t try to tie the financial issues in Iranian sports to the nuclear issue and sanctions because that’s not the truth. You need to understand that the government in Iran doesn’t care about building stadiums , facilities , and spending money on sports like the Koreans or Japanese . They care more about sending money to Syria , Lebanon , Iraq and building mosques . And you telling me to I need to accept the fact that our success is due to our talent is ironic since that what I precisely said in my previous post .
It seems it has been not easy for some people to understand. NO MONEY => NO LEAGUE. Sanctions => less sources of money for opportunists. Govt meddling in sport => Giving huge budgets only to big teams => attracting opportunists with no football knowledge => wasting limited resources => no league + no training good players Let put it in easy format. Money is a two sided blade for our football. Since our govt finances clubs like Persepolis, Esteghlal, Pas, ... They are always considered as secondary source of money. When the govt is selling oil and gas the economy is generating good money, most of corrupts hezbis and opportunists circle around easy sources of income (trade,customs, monopoly of whatever you can think of), but when money making becomes not so easy they spread around other sources. When economy is functioning well the worst corrupted individual are busy looting other areas, and less corrupted ones come near football because football is on spot light in Iran. In this situation, less greedy FA spends at least something for the sport rather than sweeping the funds. Govt tries to finance football because people are focus on it (to satisfy the masses and make a diversion from political failures)... We know our league generally produces good technical players specially good midfielders, but these players need to be found, trained, and gave time to play and shine. This only works when we have a less greedy FA, and so our league and clubs operate better. as a result we have time and some resources to help our talents to shine, but when FA is full of greedy parasites then our league and clubs are useless and our talents wasted. I said it was our talented players that pushed our team ahead because of our last generation of football players and few new individuals. As you said our FA and govt have been always corrupt but its been always a choice between worse and worst for us. Worst managers usually come when the economy is struggling or FA is injected with huge amount of money, and it puts immense pressure on our league, clubs, and players which results in failures. We have few less greedy and sport oriented managers like Yazdani Khorram. If you are familiar with this guy. He is responsible for our success in volleyball for past 15 years. He worked in various levels (kids, youth, national team). He was among few managers from Khatami era and he got kicked out because his greed was not at the same level of his coworkers. Is it clear now or you want me to give more explanation.
Just look at the major clubs and see who is the manager and follow the individual in the news. Fattollah zadeh (ex IRGC and hezbi), Ruyanian (ex-IRGC commander), Zolghadr (same story),...