Iran Futsal team, the reigning Asian Champions, defeated Libya 1-0 in their final match to win of Futsal’s Confederation Cup. Along the way they defeated CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and OFC Champions Uruguay (4-2), Guatemala (4-2), and Solomon Islands (6-0). Spain, the European Champions, did not participate in the tournament.

Iran has dominated Asian Futsal. They have won nine out of ten Asian Championships; their only loss came in hands of an excellent Japanese team in the Semi-Finals of the 2006 tournament. The Japanese went on to defeat Uzbekistan in the final match.

Iranian football officials are a bunch of hypocrites! I am not suggesting that it may be any different elsewhere, but it is really bad in Iran, trust me!

As early as a couple of months ago, the Iranian Football Federation had all but abandoned the national futsal, U16, and U23 teams. Then the futsal and U16 sides pulled a miracle! The futsal side made it to the 2^nd round of the Futsal World Cup despite being in a tough group that included champions Spain, and the U16s, through their own sheer will and devotion, managed to win the Asian U16 championship.

All of a sudden the football officials who until then “did not have time” to meet with the coaches or the team were all over the news praising the teams and speaking volumes about the merits of good preparation campaigns. A few flew to abroad to Tashkent, Uzbekistan to join the U16s, the rest made sure they were there at the airport for the photo ups when the Futsal team returned from Brazil.

Sadly, the success of these two teams may harm the Iranian futsal and youth football in the long term! Why? Because these officials will certainly point to these two successful campaigns (with which they had very little to do) and chuck them up as their own management success story. That will be enough for them to look good regardless of what may happen to the U23 and the Senior sides during their qualifying campaigns for the U23 World Championship and World Cup 2010 respectively.

The fairytale is over! Our futsal team’s amazing journey in the 2008 Futsal World Cup came to an end this morning. They put a valiant fight against an experienced Italian team, but with 50 seconds left it all came to a crushing end!

Italians tied the game at 5 a piece with less than a minute to go and qualified for the semi-finals thanks to better goal difference.

Our boys have nothing to be ashamed of. They must keep their heads high and focus on the next Asian tournament.

Thanks for all the excitement and the joys during the last few days boys!

We won, that is the good news. The bad news is that our best player Vahid Shamsaei got a yellow card and will have to sit out the decider against Italy on Tuesday. If it is any consolation the Italians have a player sitting out too.

It is going to be tough. Italians have a very good team.

OK! As predicted the Brazilians remain invincible; no surprise there. But what surprised even most of us Iranian fans was how well our team fought against the indomitable Selecao. Our boys lost a well fought game 1-0 to a team that had steamrolled over all opposition having scored 49 goals and allowed only one.

Brazilians are awesome! They are fun to watch and they are all class. But our boys showed that they are not to be taken lightly either.

Tomorrow Brazil will meet Italy, and we face Ukraine.

DOO DOO ROO DOO DOO …… IRAN!!!

Something special just happened in the small world of Iranian Futsal. For the first time since the 1992 FIFA Futsal World Cup Iran’s team made it through to the second round.

Iran tied two times champions Spain in the first game, defeated Libya and Uruguay 4-2, and needing at least a tie to go through, defeated Czech Republic 3-2.

The significance of this in the eyes of Iranian futsal fans may become clearer if you consider the fact that Iran has won every Asian futsal championship since its inception, except in 2007 when they were defeated by Japan in the final game. However, on the world stage they only have a fourth place in 1992 to show for all of their Asian dominance. So perhaps the emotional display of the players and the coaches after the final whistle against the Czechs would be better understood within that context.

The most surprising reaction to the qualification arguably came from the usually stone faced head coach Hossein Shams broke into tears and started sobbing like a baby! The man was so upset with the lack of support for his team by the Iranian Football Federation that in the last team press meeting announced his plan to resign after the tournament.

Anyway, the celebrations are very short lived because Iran will face the invincible Brazilians in two days.

Iran won the Championship seven times in a row since its inception in 1999, but then was dethroned by an inspired Japanese team in 2006. However, the following year, they got their revenge by defeating the Japanese team 4-1 in the final to get back on top.

This year, the two adversaries met in the semi-finals and Iran overcame the challengers by a narrow margin to win 1-0. The outcome of the match was in doubt until the final whistle, but Iran Coach Hossein Shams claimed afterwards that he had no doubts that Iran would prevail!

Now the only thing standing between Iran and a 9th championship are the hosts Thailand.

Hey boys and girls, we won the Asian Futsal Championship in the Asian Indoor Games in Macau.

Whoohoo! That’s great! Now tell me, who Team Melli’s coach is and who is the head of the football federation?

Ah, who am I kidding?! We still don’t have a national team coach or a federation boss to hire one! Everyone who has gone through high school in Iran will tell you that we Iranians love to leave things for the last minutes!

We do not start working on anything until there is barely time enough time left to do it right. Then we scramble like crazy, and make everyone’s lives miserable to get the job done on time. Then we proceed to brag about how good we are and if we had enough time we could have done it even better! So being an extension of life, why should we approach football any differently? Right?

Congratulations to our boys in Macau. We are proud of you.

At least we did not come away with nothing! Iran defeated Kyrgyzstan to win third place. Japan for their part defeated Uzbekistan 5:1 to win the championship.