WC 2018 Group B: Spain Portugal Iran Morocco

I was talking purely about the creative aspect, not overall play.

Expect Ziyech at a top club by the end of the summer.

 

Ronaldo still the strength factor for Portugal overall.

 

By the way the Morocco match was in Turin, not Morocco...

 

Portugal 2 Egypt 1

 

Does anyone know what the weather forecasts say for this group’s matches? Will there be any rainy days?

 

Iranian team was garbage, that's the important issue. Your goalkeeper was good. The penalty was right.

Look at Portugal and Morocco. You can not handle them with that performance of yours.

 

By the way, Morocco’s next opponent Uzbekistan, tied Senegal away.

 

Morocco played good today, but for the first time we were very weak at defence, maybe because the missing of Achraf Hakimi and Romain Saiss. Mendyl and Dacosta who replaced them were not convincing. And Munir the goalkeeper wasn't good, so lot of fans now are claiming Bono of Girona. Other big problem is that we dominated the midfield without being dangerous in attack, so we had very few goal opportunities. It's good for morale but it doesn't reflect the game because Serbia was strong and dangerous at some moments.

 

First Half of the Serbia vs Morocco game:

[/QUOTE]

 

anybody know which starters tunisia were missing, if any? i am genuinely curious in knowing if this was a full strength tunisia or not.

 

i dont think one can make conclusions of this level based on a single friendly. you have to realize that both center backs were bench players, and starters in other positions were also missing. we dont have good depth, at least when it comes to being competitive at the world cup level.

i am really happy we got a friendly of this calibre. for 2014 preparation we only played some weak teams like trinidad and tobago which simply made our team gel better: they did not offer much in terms of challenging us and exposing our weak spots. however, the likes of tunisia and algeria will. that is the point of friendlies.

it is actually beneficial to lose some friendlies and get exposed because that will make the team more aware and work on those issues in time for the world cup.

we really need at least one friendly against a world class team to prepare for spain. i heard a friendly with italy was in the works but i wont believe it till i see it.

it is a shame we have some injuries right now but i hope to see our strongest side possible against algeria in an attack minded game to prepare for morocco. we also need a game against a team that mirrors moroccos style. CQ needs to put aside this "saving my secrets for the WC." the time is now. some machiavellianism is ok but at the end of the day it will be 11 vs 11 and we have to out attack morocco and beat them fair and square.

 

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All of our regular starters (even if they weren't that many featured against Tunisia) and even top bench players did fine against Tunisia. But the bench players on defense and in the defensive midfield posts showed they still need more experience and opportunity to gel together and give Iran the kind of defensive organization that we have generally been famous for these years. That defensive organization and stability was obviously lacking against Tunisia.

Here is how I would rate Iran's players against Tunisia using kicker's 1-5 rating system.

Beiranvand (1.5) - Rezaeian (3), Khanzadeh (4.5), Cheshmi (5), Mohammadi (3) - Karimi (5), Haj Safaie (3.5) - Ansarifard (3), Shojaie (2), Amiri (3.5) -Ghoochannejad (3.5).
Subs:
Ghoddos (3.5), Montazeri (5), Ebrahimi (5), Rezaie (4), Torabi (NR), Jahanbakhsh (NR).

 

As I had mentioned before the Tunisia match, I am more or less comfortable with our choices upfront even in the absence of players like Azmoun, Taremi (to a lesser extent), and Jahanbakhsh (who only played 10 minutes against Tunisia after we had fallen behind). While Iran loses a bit of its cohesion and bite without its first choice players upfront, the replacements are generally all proven players.

But Iran has not really played any serious games with a make shift defense like the one we used against Tunisia and, similarly, even though we have to find a replacement for Ezatolahi for the Morocco game which he will miss due to his red card from our game against South Korea, our d-mid options aren't promising either. When both of our central defenders and our defensive midfielder aren't our regular players, then obviously you can't rely on how a different group and setup were doing before to judge how these players will do. And based on the Tunisia match, we clearly don't have the same level of players in these posts to replace our regulars than we have elsewhere.

 

We played with bench/reserve players in a friendly yet you have ignorant people drawing conclusions already about Iran

Morocco looked pretty good vs Serbia, Portugal does not look impossible to get points from (far from it)

 

Btw Colombia, who lost to South Korea not long ago, has beaten France, I guess France is trash (Logic of some people here) Peru has beaten Croatia, Peru>Croatia

 

IMO, the games that were played showed the following:

1- Spain -- They are in good shape. I don't think they will disappoint.
2- Portugal -- The doubts about them are justified. They aren't a show-in for the 2nd spot in this group and will need Ronaldo at his best to advance.
3- Morocco -- They are what their Sept-Nov 2017 games showed. A good side that can stand up to Portugal and beat Iran.
4- Iran -- We will be underdogs in this group, but obviously we aren't the same side as we played against Tunisia. Our strength -- Iran's defensive organization and cohesion -- was our clearest weakness against the Tunisians and that wasn't entirely surprising. We had a completely different central defense and d-mid than we have played in all of our important matches before, whether in qualifying or in our more serious friendlies. In the meantime, offensively, we can bite and create quick chances. That was even true without some of our best players in the rainy pitch in Tunisia.

 

If I were Queiroz, I would put my entire focus on finding acceptable replacements to back up Ezatolahi, who will also miss the Morocco match. Neither Karimi nor Ebrahimi are up to that task at this level. I don't know the answer myself, but if Queiroz can find that answer, he will have given Iran a realistic chance to do well in Russia.

 

I know Dejagah is definitely out due to his injury, but can someone tell me the status on the injuries for the following players:

1- Pouraliganji
2- Taremi
3- Azmoun

Specifically, is there any hope they can play for us against Algeria?

 

How on earth that wasn't a penalty? It was a penalty from all angles, but if there is any doubt, the last slow motion replay leaves no doubt about it.

 

Yeah. That was a penalty.

 

If that penalty was called, the game would have proceeded very differently. Even with a 2nd string side, Iran is very comfortable playing with the lead. But in some ways, I suppose its good that the penalty wasn't called. It helped better expose the issues we need to tackle. Our central defense/d-mids were atrocious against Tunisia. Far from being the organized, error free, tactically disciplined side in the back that people expect from Iran, our defense was full of errors, errand passes, missed tackles, missed assignments, and in a game where Iran had 3-4 good chances to score, we still were outplayed because Tunisia had something like 5-6 chances and deservedly scored on us even if their goal was technically an own goal by Iran.

 

full match


The game was in Torino but it was a home game really, 18 000 fans came to support Morocco.

I was disappointed by Renard's substitutions, I would have used Azaro for the last 30 minutes rather than Bouhaddouz and I would also have tested Harit instead of Belhanda.

 

Most of those shots by Serbia were speculative and caused no threat. Morocco had less chances, but they were more clear cut.

 

The post game reaction of the coaches in this group was interesting. Spain's coach basically said he was happy with his side's performance, but they will even do better at the World Cup. Morocco's coach wasn't entirely happy with his team's performance tactically, although he said his players had done fine on the technical level. He basically indicated there was room for improvement. Portugal's coach, on the other hand, essentially conceded that his side was pretty disappointing but said that they have Ronaldo! Iran's coach said Iran needed more such games particularly for the domestic based players to get exposure to playing at the international level and was thankful such players got some of that experience against Tunisia. Queiroz added that you can't teach experience -- and players like the ones he used against Tunisia needed to be thrown on the front lines to gain such experience first hand.