i love this. i do remember the heyday where we had a lot of KPAs in the RPL after the 2006 world cup. By a lot, I mean 4, but I think we had 3 on Zenit at once -- Lee Ho, Kim Dong Jin, Hyun Young Min. And I think that was around the same time Bum-Suck was in Samara. In any case, what I'm trying to say is...let's continue to try and use far fetched logical extrapolations to try and compare apples, oranges, and mangoes -- all for the sake of trying to convince ourselves that one asian team is better than the other. Hey someone start posting pass completion rates from the CSL.
chill out guys. we'll (both iran and korea posters) do the talking/banter/whatever in the proper thread at least when WCQ begins whether it's in korean, iranian, or general section. anything other than that is useless. although there's a potential of koreans topping iran in a game on any given day, they sure haven't managed to do that vs. Carlos Quieroz yet no matter what form Korean/Iranian players are in European and Asian leagues. That's enough for me at the moment until we are close to WCQ again.
I'm all up for trash talk but please be reasonable. Yes, Azmoun has potential but you cannot compare him scoring a lot in the Russian league to the likes of Son Heung Min. It's like a AAA baseball player who hit X amount of HRs bragging to a Major Leaguer who hit X-10 HRs. Also, we're talking about a league that did not even appear in the European Champions League finals. Even countries like Sweden, Romania, Greece and Scotland had a team show up once or twice in the finals.
First of all, no mater how good/bad Ansarifar performs for his club. He should proof that he is national team material but he have not proven that yet. Personally I do not trust him as a valuable player for national team yet. Personally I do not like to troll. There is still more than 3 months left to the start of next round and a lot of things can be changed. Our first focus should be Qatar. Based on what I heard they play four friendly matches before start of next round. We obviously do not want to drop two home points against Qatar like last campaign. No. Do not exaggerate. As a logical Iranian fan, I know that Korea has currently better legionnaires than Iran but we can beat any team in qualifiers. What you said about CQ in this comment is not important for future. We play for victory in each of our games and try to get the max possible points to qualify smoothly. This is our first goal and to be fair many coaches can achieve that for us very comfortably. Personally I do not like CQ at all and I would not mind if we get a new coach now but it seems that you are his huge fan and I do not know why. Anyway lets agree that all fans cannot have same opinions.
There is one thing regard Korea football which makes me think about it sometimes. It is the number of K league teams. The number of league teams in most countries (especially the countries that have better football) of each continent is at least 14 teams. For example, all of first tier European football countries have at least 18 teams in their highest league level. Most second tier European football countries have at least 18 teams in their league. In Asia, Japan and Iraq have 18 teams in their league. Iran and China have 16, other countries such as Uzbekistan, Uae, Qatar, etc have at least 14. Although Korea is one of the strongest countries of the continent in football if not strongest, K league has only 12 teams even less than leagues of the smaller countries with much smaller population such as Qatar, Uae, etc. This is interesting for me. Having more teams in the league can help to produce more talent for your football. What opinions do you Koreans have about this? Do you think does KFA needs to have plan to increase the number of K league teams to 16 in next a few years or not based on what I said in previous paragraphs?
^It might be because of loss of popularity and sponsorship. (we are experiencing the second case big time even the sanctions being removed didn't help our league so far, there is no money to be injected to our economy and sponsors are falling short on their promises)
great perspective. K-League needs to grow core fan support...but these kinda talks always goes by way of "chicken or the egg" conversation
Theres a GREAT yahoo article on how Japan is doing things with its own league to make it more favorable to locals on an organic level. Course the Jleague has tons of money somehow so it has the money to make state of the art stadiums (where fans are almost on the pitch) and marketing Japanese players as 'sexy'. The result has been nothing short of amazing. Im sure some of you read or saw this thing. It came out about less than 2 years ago but it was incredible how some markets in Japan are doing so well. They've fostered several local markets into something very special.
Iran's starting eleven today had an average age of 23.5, that's under 24, with 7 of the starters being 23 and under.
Tell CQ to have Azmoun bitch slap Jang Hyun-soo all night during the return leg till he gives up playing.
Both Korea's matches against Uzbekistan will be very important now. I wonder when you should sack the coach. Because having a new one will mean starting everything from scratch and at this point its quite risky
Now would be a good time to sack him, but placing Shin Tae-yong as Interim would be another mistake, we can't afford to go Domestic again.
Interestingly enough, both Korea and Japan are in position 3 with almost identical statistics: Korea: 4P 2W 1D 1L 6GF 5GA +1 7PTS Japan: 4P 2W 1D 1L 6GF 4GA +2 7PTS The only difference is that Halilhodzic is actually trying to do something with the JNT, Stielike is doing shit.
Things haven't changed during his 2 year tenure, and things still haven't changed now. The only thing that's changing is the tone of his voice through the interviews, it's hard to believe things will even change with the remaining 2 years left.
I saw this thread, was a bit confused reading some of the messages. Most of them apparently before the WCQs. As it turned out, despite having a rather poor performance overall, Azmoun did his job and scored the winning goal against South Korea. I don't recall Son doing anything worthwhile against Iran. Nor was this the first time he hasn't done much against Iran. I think he has appeared in all of the last 4 games which Iran won, and where S.Korea was shut out. The point is not to brag but to say this: that when all things are not even nearly equal when it comes to the circumstances that lead some players from some countries to be recruited by top European leagues as compared to others, it is not exactly a winning point to just rely on a comparison of club pedigree to determine a player's actual talent and worth. P.S. Azmoun, despite his goal, has actual been in a slump and hasn't been nearly as good for Iran as he was previously.