Victims of not their own success!

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.