WC 2018 Group B: Spain Portugal Iran Morocco

Well it's still not relevant to the world cup.

 

It was a face-off between an Iranian team and a Moroccan national team player, and certainly more relevant than 10 pages of discussion we had about Benatia’s penalty in the Champions League.

 

Morocco 23 Player Squad (+ 3 Reserves)

Goalkeepers: Mounir El Kajoui (Numancia, Spain), Yassine Bounou (Girona, Spain), Ahmad Reda Tagnaouti (Ittihad Tanger);

Defenders: Mehdi Benatia (Juventus, Italy), Romain Saiss (Wolverhampton Wanderers, England), Manuel Da Costa (Basaksehir, Turkey), Badr Benoun (Raja Casablanca), Nabil Dirar (Fenerbahce, Turkey), Achraf Hakimi (Real Madrid, Spain), Hamza Mendyl (Lille, France);

Midfielders: M'bark Boussoufa (Al Jazira, UAE), Karim El Ahmadi (Feyenoord, Netherlands), Youssef Ait Bennasser (Caen, France), Sofyan Amrabat (Feyenoord, Netherlands), Younes Belhanda (Galatasaray, Turkey), Faycal Fajr (Getafe, Spain), Amine Harit (Schalke, Germany);

Forwards: Khalid Boutaib (Malatyaspor, Turkey), Aziz Bouhaddouz (St. Pauli, Germany), Ayoub El Kaabi (Renaissance Berkane), Nordin Amrabat (Leganes, Spain), Mehdi Carcela (Standard de Liege, Belgium), Hakim Ziyech (Ajax, Netherlands).

Reserves: Youssef En-Nesyri (Malaga, Spain), Mazraoui Noussair (Ajax Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Oualid El Hajjam (Amiens, France).

 

So you needed an entire team to defeat Boussoufa or how should we understand this comparison?

 

The Persepolis-Al Jazeera playoff games were interesting because I did get to see Boussoufa very closely, especially since I could see him basically cover an Iranian player, Ahmadzadeh, who while not on the our national team, is a decent player. Their individual duels basically provided me with some greater insight regarding Boussoufa. As I had mentioned before, my overall assessment of Boussoufa isn't all that favorable. He is a fine player but nothing that would stand out in my eyes. El Ahmadi and Ziyech, on the other hand, are good players and El Ahmadi in particular is better than anyone Iran has in his post.

As for Benatia, while certainly a good defender, I will need to see a bit more to know how his defensive and marking skills will play out for the Iran/Morocco game. Taremi, IMO, will be able to draw a lot of fouls from Benatia while I don't see Azmoun as someone who takes players one on one that often. If Benatia can control Azmoun in the air, where he is particularly lethal, his typical route to score goals will need more variations. But, overall, teams play one another and not individuals. The dynamics that will matter are the ones I have already mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

 

You are right and wrong

Of course, Persepolis-Al Jazeera has no real relevance to Iran v Morocco. That goes without saying.

On the other hand, how Boussoufa showed himself against Persepolis, and in particularly, against Ahmadzadeh who was playing directly against him, isn't entirely irrelevant to understanding what Boussoufa can and cannot bring to the table for Morocco against Iran. On the individual level, it wasn't irrelevant.

As an aside, Persepolis (who made the AFC CL semis last year and have now made the AFC CL quarterfinals) have a starting XI which is composed entirely of Iranian players. Persepolis' foreign players are substitute players for the club and usually come in as subs. There are 4 Persepolis players on Iran's 35 player national team roster that was just announced: their goalie (Beiranvad), their evergreen veteran captain (S. J. Hosseini), their winger Amiri, as well as another defender (M. Ansari). Of these 4, I expect the first two to play for Iran at the World Cup.

Esteghlal, the other Iranian team that qualified to the quarterfinals of the AFC CL has 8 players on Iran's 35 player roster. However, with the possible exception of V. Ghafouri, none are really starters. Despite boasting that many (mostly bench or reserve) Iranian national team players in other sectors, Esteghlal's top forward and goal scorer is actually a player from Senegal named Tiam. His hat-trick against a fellow Iranian club, Zobe Ahan, in the knock out round a few days ago won Esteghlal its ticket to the quarterfinals. While there are other foreign players in the Iranian league (including Esteghlal's Uzbek former Asian player of the Year, Dzeparov) who are important players for their clubs, what makes the Iranian league and clubs interesting to me in comparison to their Asian rivals is that: a) our best players usually don't play in Iran, while the best players for most of the (west Asian) teams play in their leagues; and b) with very few exceptions, there is really no comparison between the quality of foreign players attracted to competing leagues in Asia to those who play in Iran. The foreign players in the leagues in Asia are dominant players for their clubs and are often quite expensive and occasionally somewhat famous players. The foreign players in Iran's league are basically unknown players and while a few are important players in their clubs, most come and go without much notice.

 

Naw, it just took one of our former U-23 bench players to completely neutralize Boussoufa and make him invisble for 180 minutes.

 

Why no Semedo?

 

I'm surprised Boufal has not been called. Renard prefered Carcela instead, I like the first one more, even if he is still a futsal player to my eyes, he can make good differences when he comes in as a sub. Carcela has never been great with Morocco IIRC.

Also, Bouhadouz, why ? He scored only 4 goals in the german second division this season, never scores with the national team. Not a huge difference but Mahi or Bammou would have been better options to my eyes. Even En Nesryi actually.

Third case that disturbs me : Mendyl. Why does Renard give him so much credit ? He lacks many essential qualities to be a good football player. I hope he will not get any playing time at least.

 

I agree about Boufal and Bouhaddouz. I would have picked Boufal too. He is the type of player who can create something out of nothing and who can bring a plus if things are stuck. Players like him are rare nowadays not just in Morocco but anywhere. But he has a problem with his club and hasn't played in a little while, and i think Renard prefers players who are very fit. Maybe Carcela is also more OK with the sub role. Carcela did really well in Belgium in the second half of the season, and those who know him very well (including Samuel Eto'o) speak very highly of him, so who knows, maybe he will surprise us all.

I still don't understand why Renard selects Bouhaddouz. The dude looks limited and even En-nessyri is better in my opinion. Who knows what Renard would have done if Azarou and Alioui werent injured.

I'm also surprised there is no Yamiq. I would have picked him over Benoun, as he has been playing recently with Genoa after transfering from Raja Casablanca in January. He also looks more solid to me than Benoun.

I prefer Hakimi but i think that Mendyl is alright as a sub. He didnt look bad in the last games i saw of him with Lille. He also has a high work rate and got his condition back by playing a lot recently in Ligue 1. Renard really likes tireless left backs.

I also would have loved to see Mazraoui as more than a reserve. That kid is very very good and will be big in the future.

All in all, Renard said earlier that he would pick the best "group" of Moroccan players, not the best 23 individual Moroccan players. I trust that he did just that.

 

Now speaking of Boussoufa and Asian Champions Leuage, you guys actually have another player in the same competition, a striker named Yousef Al-Arabi who is actually very impressive, and a far better goal getter than any other Moroccan forwards I have seen, yet he’s not even on your list, which is surprising.

 

Damn... No World Cup for Semedo and Gomes...

 

Ricardo is better right now, and Portugal has a lot of great rightbacks.

Gomes isnt as good as Bruno Fernandes or Manuel Fernandes, so thankfully Santos made the right decision there.

Ruben Neves is the shocking omission

 

He is terrible in the national team. From ten chances he scores maybe one.

 

Naturally Neves was the name everyone questioned... now having time to think about it more.. i am ok with it..

In regards to Ricardo Pereira.. i didnt realize at the time he can play LB too.. so incase Raphael (injury prone) gets ruined at some point, Pereira can then slide over to LB.. and would like up Pereira--Pepe--Dias?--Cedric

 

Mario Rui has been pretty good for Napoli, but I think that also factored into Santos' thinking. Ricardo is quality on both flanks.

 

Very little time remaining until the World Cup. Can't wait to see Iran in a big match again.

 

Cédric Soares is more stable though less gifted and is the normal starter. Semedo was fighting Cancelo and Pereira for the second spot. Cancelo went to Italy (Inter) and is great going forward but in defense is suspect, we do not Play like Brazil, we are more compact and Santos is a defensive coach. Pereira has been playing regularily for Porto and can Play LB too where Guerreiro is injured quite often and Rui (Napoli) is largely untested. Semedo has not been playing regularily and cannot Play LB, that said, Pereira over Semedo surprised most people.

 

why you wearing that avatar picture haha?

 

Benatia is a top 10 defender, he plays against world class strikers like Icardi, Suarez, CR7. So i think Azmoun and Taremi will have a very hard time against him...

 

And Azmoun has scored on Godin and Boateng before so praise be the matchup...Lord Jeebus the battles are coming

 

We were also the shortest in 94 n we still managed to do something the tall Iranians have never done (qualify from our group). Being tall is not neccessarily a good thing in football most of the best players n teams that have won the wc in the past have been short not tall.

 

Comparing your group with their group is brutal. Saudis have a good chance advancing but Iranians should pull an upset against Portugal or Spain to advance to the next round. 1994 Saudi team was a fine team, how do you compare your current team to 94?

 

Actually our group in 94 is very similar to Irans group as we had 2 European power house neighbours in Belgium and Netherlands and we had Morocco in 94 in our group as well we beat them but the match everyone remembers is our victory over belgium so maybe Iran can qualify like we did and Portugal can be their belgium but I doubt they have a player that can dribble half of the opposing team n score maybe Ali Karimi could have if he was still playing for them. As for how I compare our current team to 94, well I would say this team lacks the stars of 94 but as a team we have been playing our best football in the last decase so Im very hopeful to qualify again specially given our good record against our opponents in group A and we are probably the most prepared team in the WC even more so than the hosts!

 

Actually you can't compare Spain and Portugal with Holland and Belgium. Both were decent teams but not as good as our opponents. About your previous comment, yes height is not always an advantage. To put it in better words, height is not enough. Our current team is actually a really quality team. Actually by far the best in Asia and definitely a lot better than Saudi Arabia. We are in a very tough group. However, all groups are difficult when you really think about it. I see our group as an advantage. There is less pressure on our team cause no oneone expect Iran to go through and anything other than an early elimination, would be considered a miracle. So overall, I am very hopeful of our team. I don't say we will qualify, all I say is we will be tough to beat for any of our opponents