No offense but the three you mentioned are nothing special compared to Korea, Australia, Japan's absentees. Ezatolahi - 4 games in the EFL Championship Gholizadeh - attacker who scored only 1 goal in the Belgian league Rezaei - attacker who scored only 4 goals in the Belgian league Korea missed... Kwon Chang-hoon - He scored 11 goals in Ligue 1 last season Nam Tae-hee - He started in all six post-WC friendlies Ki Sung-yueng (against Qatar) Australia missed... Mooy - He is one of the best players for 2018/19 EPL side Huddersfield Town Arzani - The wonderkid was bought by Manchester City Japan missed... Nakajima - Japan's most important attacker Shoji - He is a starting CB in the Ligue 1 Kamada - He scored 15 goals in the Belgian league The difficulty Bahrain & Qatar (Korea), Saudi Arabia & Vietnam (Japan) and Uzbekistan & UAE (Australia) > Oman & China (Iran) No jet lag, similar climate, similar culture and many Iran fans. Football isn't the most popular sport in Australia, Japan and Korea yet Iran is less successful than them.
In the modern era, many Koreans (Son Heung-min, Park Chu-young and Kwon Chang-hoon), Japanese (Hidetoshi Nakata, Naohiro Takahara, Shinji Kagawa and Shinji Okazaki) and Australians (Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill and John Aloisi) scored double-digit goals in a season in the major 5 leagues. Iran has only Hashemian. Please face the reality. Alireza Jahanbakhsh finished the season with 0 goals and 0 assists. Premier League - 19 games / 0 goals and 0 assists FA cup - 4 games / 0 goals and 0 assists League Cup - 1 game / 0 goals and 0 assists Unfortunately, my prediction has come true. In the past few years, we have seen Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iraqi (Ali Adnan), Filipino (Neil Etheridge), Chinese (Wu Lei) players doing well in the top leagues but Iranian players have been extremely quiet there.
My 2018/19 award Player of the year : Son Heung-min - He scored 20 goals in all competitions and was selected in the 2018/19 Champions League team of the season by France Football. Honorable mention : Makoto Hasebe - He was selected in the 2018/19 Bundesliga team of the season by Kicker and selected in the 2018/19 Europa League team of the season by UEFA. Newcomer of the year : Takehiro Tomiyasu - He will become the first Asian CB to play for a big club. Honorable mention : Wu Lei - 3 goals & 2 assists in a half La Liga season. Worst transfer of the year : Alireza Jahanbakhsh - Brighton spent 19M euros for a player who finished the season with 0 goals and 0 assists. What a disaster. Honorable mention : Shoya Nakajima - He had a potential to play for a big club but moved to the desert for 35M euros.
Worth Asian transfer this season for me is Wu Lei -> Espanyol He is phenomenal in the club. Leading the team to their European dreams after 14 years or something. What could turn to be real disaster (Marketing expansion in China) turn to be worthy transfer in La Liga.
Bump to give recognition to a player that's been in our league awhile. Yusuf Helal (Bahrain) scored the 2nd goal for Slovan Liberec recently in their surprise 4-1 win against Viktoria Plzen (a top 3 Czech club thats made frequent appearances in Champions League & Europa League). 1300092960156065797 is not a valid tweet id He's been in the Czech league for 3 seasons, and while very inconsistent and was a bust at Slavia Prague, it's hard to ignore the landmarks he set for his country in that time. 1) First Bahraini player in a UEFA first division 2) First Bahraini player to score a goal in UEFA first division 3) First Bahraini (or any Gulf Country) player to appear in a Champions League Group Stage match (last season with Slavia against Interazionale)
4) First Bahraini player to score in Europa League Group match. #UELAbdulla Yusuf Helal 🇧🇭 becomes the first ever Bahraini player to score in the @EuropaLeague group stages with this goal to put @FCSlovanLiberec up 1-0 against Gent https://t.co/YyWiLwJjcC— ArabBallers (@Arab_Ballers) October 22, 2020