WC 2018 Group B: Spain Portugal Iran Morocco

Serbia's results don't impress me much. And that is how I judge a team: by their results.

 

As for the Uzbeks, they are decent but can lose their composure and confidence if they fall behind. Their midfield, at least if it includes former Asian player of the year and current Esteghlal (Iran) player Sever Djeparov, is pretty good. That is their strong suit IMO. But since Djeparov is 35 years old, he and some other veterans -- such as Alexander Geynrikh and Odil Ahmedov - might not be called up for a friendly against Morocco and Uzbekistan might instead try to field more of their young players. In which case, it will be tougher to know what to expect from them.

Generally, though, with or without their veteran players, the Uzbek sides I have seen quickly turn into rubbish if they fall behind -- and more so, if they fall behind away from home. Or at least that is how they have been against Iran at the national level and club level alike. Iran beat Uzbekistan away (1:0) and home (2:0) in the qualifiers and totally shut them out from any chances to score on us even in Tashkent. But the game in Iran was kind of interesting: both sides wanted to win. Iran needed to win to clinch qualification. The Uzbeks to keep up and leap frog South Korea in the qualification table. The Uzbeks were surprisingly adventurous and even meddlesome the first 10-15 minutes. But once Iran scored, they faded and it became a very easy win for us. We beat them 2:0 while missing several other chances including a penalty, while the Uzbeks were not really resisting much.

 

Dude, they topped their UEFA WC qualifiers group. What more do you want? lol I forgot that UEFA is a weak and unproven confederation.

 

And now they have Savic and some other players they couldnt use when Muslin was coach. Looks very good imo.

 

Serbia throughout the last few years has been a team playing below the sum of their parts. When you look at the team on paper you have to wonder how they don't make more noise. However, I think they are starting to click, so if they play to what the level they are on paper, then they can surprise. Topping a group with Ireland, Wales and Austria is nothing to dismiss either.

 

Serbia's qualification to the World Cup ahead of Wales, Ireland and Austria, was actually their first qualification to any major tournament since the 2010 World Cup (where they finished behind Australia in their group). They were miserable in Euro 2016 qualifying. They have done better recently and, right now, they rank comparable to Iran, which is why I see them as a good test for how Morocco will do against Iran. They currently rank #23 by ELO (Iran ranks #22) and #36 by FIFA (Iran ranks #33). Incidentally, their last match was a 1:1 draw against South Korea in Korea.

 

From a distance, I didn't understand why Muslin didn't continue with them, since he was the guy who had them qualify to the World Cup when before him, Serbia was repeatedly failing since the 2010 World Cup? Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Serbia do with their new coach too, as having a new coach take them to Russia makes it harder to predict how they will do too.

p.s.
Assuming Savic's injury isn't all that significant, his addition to their World Cup squad will be interesting. He did play for them in their 1:1 draw against South Korea though. But for our context, namely the friendly against Morocco, I don't know if he will be in their lineup as he is injured.

 

I can't wait for Nani to jump in with the argument: "friendlies don't matter" even though we are only talking about Serbia because of their upcoming friendly against Morocco

 

I spoke about Serbia because you and salas expressed opinions about them and I wanted to chime in, not because of the upcoming friendly. I also never said friendlies don't matter at all, only that people that put too much stock into them are doing themselves a disservice.

 

Too much of anything isn't good
I kind of agreed with your assessment on Serbia. I may not be as impressed as you with the fact that they topped a group with Wales, Austria and Ireland. But certainly their qualification to the World Cup was an improvement over their repeated failures in recent years. Do you know why they changed their coach who qualified them?

 

No idea really. I remember reading something about Muslin having a different vision for their WC team than the federation. So you have to figure during one of the meetings after qualification, when discussing who would play and how they would play, the federation had a very different view on things. Who knows though, often the politics behind the scenes are things we will never know. Serbia is a very strange phenomenon. They have many top quality players, they also had 4 or 5 amazing youth level teams (u20 and u21) consecutively, but they simply can't translate that to their senior squad.

 

This thread has over 1000 more posts than the next group discussion thread (Group D).

 

I copy what a Serbia guy wrote before Muslin was fired.

Currently, SMS's agent Mateja Kezman is in a bit of a rift with the FA, so Muslin is pretty much forbidden from calling up SMS, just because certain people are pissed with his agent and don't want the kid in the national team. And that sucks, because he's a terrific player. But until they make some sort of deal, we won't be seeing Sergej in a Serbia shirt.

 

I can bring some light into the darkness why Serbian FA fired their head coach Muslin despite successful qualfying.

The whole saga has to do with the matter that Milinković-Savić was continously ignored by head coach Muslin for the whole qualfying campaign. There were two assumptions. The first one was that the advisor of Savić Mateja Kežman was in a beef with the Serbian Federation. The second one Savić was called up to the National Team before the start of qualfying and Muslin planned to use him as Central Defensive Midfielder next to Matić. Accordingly Savić wasn't happy with that role and pushed for a more offensive role. The stubborn Muslin decided to ignore Savić from then on despite his excellent club form for Lazio. Asked in public why Savić was ignored by him he answered that he wouldn't fit in his system.

Serbia had a solid qualfying campaign and Muslin delivered results so he silenced the critics for the time being. But one has to confess that his team got also lucky here and there and didn't play attractive football. After Serbia managed to qualify on the last matchday Muslin and the Serbian FA had a meeting. The head of the Serbian FA Kokeza pressured Muslin to finally invite Savić for the November friendlies against China and South Korea. But Muslin refused and Serbian FA decided to part company with him.

 

As someone who watched both teams I think Iran is slightly better, but not by much. I think it will end in a 1:1 draw as Tunisia is playing at home. Tunisia is one of the teams that are better than their reputation. I rate them higher than Egypt as they are a more well-rounded side in contrary to Egypt that is heavily relying on Salah. I consider the away game in Tunisia as Iran's second hardest preparation game after the Turkey friendly in Istanbul. Algeria is in a rebuilding phase and Iran should beat them in Austria. Also Greece isn't that strong anymore. I rate Tunisia higher than Greece.

 

yea or i think i rate the Tunisia game tougher than the Turkey match, because Tunisia gonna play world cup, not Turkey so i think the Tunisia player gonna be more motivated for those friendlies. Not so sure how motivated the turkey players gonna be.

 

Iran has announced its roster for the Tunisia and Algeria friendlies as follows below my post. The team is evenly divided between foreign and Iranian based players (14 each). Shojaie is invited for the first time after 7 months. Ansari, the Perspolis defender, was surprisingly cut (although I haven't been impressed by him either). Overall, I think it is a good list.

Goalkeepers:
Alireza Beiranvand (Persepolis), Hossein Hosseini (Esteghlal), Rashid Mazaheri (Zob Ahan), Amir Abedzadeh (Maritimo).

Central Defenders:
Jalal Hosseini (Persepolis), Morteza Pouraliganji (Al Sadd), Rouzbeh Cheshmi (Esteghlal), Pejman Montazeri (Esteghlal), Mohammad Reza Khanzadeh (Padideh),

Fullbacks:
Milad Mohammadi (Akhmat Grozny), Vouria Ghafouri (Esteghlal), Ramin Rezaeian (Ostende), Saeid Aghaei (Sepahan).

Defensive and Central Midfielders:
Saeid Ezatolahi (Amkar Perm), Ehsan Haji Safi (Olympiacos), Ali Karimi (Sepahan), Omid Ebrahimi (Esteghlal), Ali Gholizadeh (Saipa)

Attacking Midfielders:
Alireza Jahanbakhsh (AZ Alkmaar), Saman Ghoddos (Östersund), Masoud Shojaei (AEK Athens), Vahid Amiri (Persepolis)

Forwards:
Mehdi Taremi (Al Gharafa), Sardar Azmoun (Rubin Kazan), Karim Ansarifard (Olympiacos), Kaveh Rezaei (Charleroi S.C.), Reza Ghoochannejhad (Heerenveen), Mehdi Torabi (Saipa).

 

I'm sure the Turks will be motivated. We Albanians beat them last November in their soil with a 3:2 victory while we were playing 50 minutes with ten men. Afterwards they also lost to Romania. They will try to stop the downward spiral.
Also I read somewhere Turkey and Iran haven't played each other for more than 40 years. That's weird if you consider these are neighbouring countries. I think there might be kind of a rivalry between these two. Maybe our Iranian members know better.

Still Turkey is a decent European side and under inclusion of all these circumstances I think the Turkey game will be the most challenging for Iran.

 

Turkey and Iran haven't played in over 50 years and that is no coincidence! A game between Turkey and Iran won't be merely about football. Iran and Turkey have similar populations, are neighbors, and have been rival powers for centuries, exemplified by the many wars fought between the two sides before the 20th century.

 

Turkey has a lot of really good players and a pretty good league, and while they had some issues in the past few years, they often bounce back very quickly. They are one of those UEFA teams that disappear for a while and then qualify to a major tournament and go to the Semis, as they did in the WC in 2002 and in the 2008 Euro. I don't want to sound like I'm undermining Iran, but there is no way in my opinion that Iran can go to Turkey and win. Not only does Turkey have players of a quality clearly above Iran, there is also no way that the Turks (as nationalistic as they are) would lose to a neighbor (and Iran for that matter) at home. I see Turkey winning, while a draw would be a very very good result for Iran. My best friend is Turkish so I will gladly watch that game and I will tease the *#** out of him if by some miracle Turkey loses at home to Iran

 

Some of the U22 players from Iran in the video I posted against Turkey are now part of Iran's senior team, notably Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Alireza Beiranvand. Others like Payam Sadeghian, who plays for a Turkish club, or Mohsen Mosalman who plays for Persepolis, are within the orbit of players that could be part of Iran's national team down the line -- although Sadeghian in particular has some disciplinary issues that has stunted his progress and career. But that game was the only match played by Iran's national team at any age level against Turkey in the past 44 years. Ironically, before this match, Iran's U22 also played Morocco's U22 in the same tournament in Qatar and won 1:0.

 

An under 22 game from 2013 in a completely empty stadium in some random tournament in Qatar has absolutely nothing to do with a 1st team friendly in Istanbul or Ankara with 80,000 people in the stands.

The link below is equally irrelevant but you showed in the past that you cared about 11vs11 historic records haha

https://www.11v11.com/teams/iran/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Turkey/

 

The game I posted at least had players who would be part of the two teams. The historic record you post involved players who for the most part aren't even living or are in retirement homes.

That said, I have not commented on how Iran will do against Turkey in Istanbul. It will be a tough match and I will certainly want to watch it as it won't be a normal friendly. It is a historic game.

 

Considering Turkey recently lost to Iceland and Albania at home, I don't think it's quite the fortress there as made out to be. They have some top quality players for sure, but I really don't understand why I often read things suggesting they are strong when everything points to them being the very epitome of mediocrity. I understand the game with Iran is not your standard friendly, but if Iran win I would personally not be surprised in the least.