Match Day 12 (match #35) - Iran v. Portugal - Saransk

They need to hold their defense line but their offensive tactics were not impressive and usually too late. If they use high press they have better chances against tough teams. Using low press and staying in their own half most of the time end up in a draw or low margin loss. Iran is a decent team, if they want to progress they should use high press and more offensive tactics. Their weakest spots were lack of creativity in midfield, lack of a clinical finisher, low passing accuracy and spending too much in deep defending. They spent a lot of time on containing both Spain and Morocco in Iranian half with pretty much one counter or no alternative plan.

 

I agree that's why they didn't score any goals. They play like they already have a lead even when they've behind and that's probably why they are going to home. If course had they opened up and attacked they would have probably let a few more in at the back

 

see, when you say actual football stuff and stop repeating false nonsense like "portugal got robbed and 100% of calls were pro Iran and against portugal" when Iran was clearly the one that overall got the short end of the stick in terms of refereeing, it makes it much better to have a meaningful discussion, so i will respond to you here.

you pretty much answered your own question here (look at bold part i quoted). even germany lost by a bigger margin in a must win game because they played too attacking by bringing out their keeper in the last few minutes.

south korea played a very average game... they should have scored much earlier with all the free space germany gave them. germany were lucky south korea kept messing up their counterattacks otherwise even germany would have lost 3 or 4 nil. so it was right of Iran to play defensive until the end: we nearly won 2-1 with this tactic. we would have lost like 3-0 if we attacked. but i agree that at some points we should have attacked more than we did... which i will address next:

i mostly agree with you. the reason costa scored fluky goal and quaresma individually brilliant goal is because spain/portugal were near our goal the whole game, so the chances of something like this will end up higher. i think we should have played SLIGHTLY more attacking. that is, instead of completely focusing 100% of our resources on preventing getting scored on in first half of spain/portugal match, we should have still tried attacking with 4/5 players each time we got the ball, and we should have formed more counterattacks instead of just kicking the ball away.

 

I saw the highlights of your match against Turkey and you played this high press style but your defenders were sloppy and slow. I recommend you to practice on this high press style with young and fast defenders from now on.

 

i dont think the way we played against turkey would work against portugal and spain for 90 mins. if we got exposed by turkey then so would spain and portugal.

how i want us to play is like we played against yugoslavia in 1998. yugo were same level as portugal is today, i.e. 5th/6th/7th in world.. not at level of first tier world class teams like spain, brazil, france, etc.. but 2nd tier world class team. before the match yugo said they would score double digits against Iran and everybody said Iran will lost by many goals. we played defensive but still tried attacking with a few players (while keeping our defense back to not get exposed), lots of counterattacks the whole game over 90 minutes. yugo did not create many dangerous chances against us, and they only won 1-0 sinisa best free kick taker in the world took free kick against our substitute keeper who positioned his wall poorly.

 

I have seen 2 or 3 of your friendlies and your last world cup matches (usually highlights). You need to practice on high press. I have seen your team using this style only in one friendly. Your compact defending in last and this world cup was pretty much low deep press.

I have not seen that 98 match you are talking about. I am against low deep press. As long as you have some well crafted counter attacks and higher line of defense/press, your success rate will increase. That is all I can say.

 

i dont think high press would work for us over 90 minutes against strong teams...maybe for parts of the game like we actually did against portugal and spain, but for 90 mis we would get exposed.

these were our best attacks against yugoslavia. notice how we attacked with 3-5 players, keeping our defenders back. we played like this the whole game. but against spain and portugal first half we barely made any attempt to form attacks.

0:48
1:20
1:42
4:40
5:07

 

I'm not saying portugal was 100 percent robbed as u put it. That hand ball was not a penalty.. that's what I said... And that the azmoun incident wasn't a penalty either.. And that if the Diego costa incident with pepe wasn't a foul why was the ronaldo incident a red to which no one has replied by the way.

I also never said all the call were pro Iran.. . Just that there were very important calls the ref got wrong, one of which greatly benefited iran.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Also as soon as u mentioned that I should make portugal out to be the victim you went on to say that Iran was the victim. Maybe read your own posts instead of commenting on others football knowledge.

 

I think it’s about time the mods took their finger out and closed this thread game done and dusted