AFC U20 Asian Cup: Boring Iran loses to Iraq
Saeed Azimi
Staff writer
Iran's Under-20 national football team which had raised hopes with a 3-1 victory against Vietnam lost the semifinals to Iraq in a boring game.
Iran’s youngsters led by Samad Marfavi suffered a bitter blow to Emad Mohammad Reza’s side on Saturday. This was a bitter and annoying defeat for Iranian U20 football team.
In a match that Iran needed a victory to secure a place in the FIFA U-20 World Cup this year, Iran played an extremely cautious game, without a tactical plan. Iraq, which had obtained great chances throughout the game scored a late goal and disappointed Marfavi and his boys.
Iran's share from this competition was nothing but failure and regret.
In the 91st minute of the game, Iraq’s Ali Jassim took the ball from behind the penalty area and entered the box without any disruption from Iran's disjointed defense and sent the ball to the corner of Iran's goal.
Congratulating the Iraqi side during his post-match press conference, Marfavi said, “It was a critical game for both teams, but our lads did not do what we wanted from them and the Iraqi side won one-on-one duels and tried to win the ball. Our boys did not demonstrate the required technical and tactical instructions and lost one-on-one duels.”
Iran’s talented young players were denied an opportunity from participating in the FIFA U-20 World Cup because of the wrong mentality imposed by Marfavi. The qualified and talented youth of Iran once again experienced the bitter taste of a failure because in Iran, everything stays the same and nobody is willing to shake things up and change the formula to be successful.
The main question is this: Why should a team that has performed bravely in three group stage matches suddenly play so cautiously? What great feature did Iraq have that made him seem gigantic and invincible?
Iranian youngsters need to learn characteristics such as bravery and the right mentality to play in the knock-out stages in football academies and through reading or proper footballing and psychological education, so that they can be mentally strong players.
Marfavi has to answer to the public!