Ghotbi names squad for Korea DPR clash

May 27th, 2009 | By: Afshin Afshar | 6 Comments »

Team Melli squad The boys will be off to China on Friday. There they will spend a few days in training camp and play a friendly with China before flying to Korea DPR for their June 6 qualifier.

On Wednesday Head Coach Afshin Ghotbi announced his squad for the Korea DPR match. There are no surprises there. The only minor surprise, if you can call it that, is the inclusion of Javad Kazemian as the fourth striker on the roster.

If Ghotbi manages to build some self confidence back in this team, we’ll have good chance of defeating Korea DPR in Pyongyang. The friendly match against China should give of some idea how well Ghotbi has done in his short time with the team.

Tags: Afshin Ghotbi, Team Melli

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Comments

By kia | May 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

Are Chinese going to field their A team. Or just “a” team to play us!!!

Posted from United States

By Afshin Afshar | May 28th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

probably just “a” team, but that is OK. It is too late to worry about that! At this point all we can do is hope the boys can dig in deep for the next three games.

Posted from United States

By Hamid - Tehran | May 28th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

Agha Afshin, for my money Javad Kazemian is one of the most talented football players Iran has ever had. Although I must confess I have not been following his games recently. Still he would be my number one player in the team if I were the coach. I think what Kazemian needs is a one to one talk (guidance) by the manager as he sometimes seems to overdo his stuff on the pitch and loses the plot.

Posted from Islamic Republic Of Iran

By Afshin Afshar | May 28th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Hamid jAn salAm, I was a big fan of Kazemian and I still like him. But sadly his best years are behind him. From 2004 – 2007 he was regularly overlooked by Team Melli coaches. I think that discouraged him. I thought he was technical and fast. I have seen him play a few times in recent months, and he is not what he used to be.

I think at the end he may just be one of victims of our incompetent football managers; a lot of potential, but no opportunity to realize it.

Posted from United States

By Hamid - Tehran | May 28th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

Afshin jan – agree with your comments as regards players of Karimi & Kazemian calibres are very rare to come by in any countries and yet Iran has had these players and not managed to maitain them for the reasons that we all know – the same thing happens outside football anyway – I better stop here before turning the discussion into a political one – LOL

BTW, winning the 3 remaining matches is not all that hard to achieve when you look at some of the players in our team – all the players have to do is give 150% percent i.e. just go for the kill on the day and it will and can happen.

Posted from Islamic Republic Of Iran

By Mansoor | June 1st, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Kazemian is not as fast as he was. I was very impressed with him when we were trying for the last World Cup. He lost his chances to players like Khatibi who looked like JV in front of teams such as Portugal.

Kazemian is smart. He can make a difference if used in the right spot and with a right partner. He can pair up with Karimi and Shoajaiee very well.

Comments are closed