Iran's offense was a disaster [By the numbers]

[Babak agha]

Those defensive stats are impressive because you can't rack up most tackles, clearances and saves by just playing defensive. Simply having men in the back is not enough. You must also have great organization and tactical discipline as well as individual effort.

"Most defensive" does not equal "best defense". Otherwise teams like Nepal and Sri Lanka would be the best defensive teams in the world. Those teams play bunker ball against all bigger teams but always get lit up. Tactics and organization is key. And that's where CQ gets the credit.

I don't see why you have the urge to point out the obvious.
Here us another one, if we would have 30 new born babies in the back, we also wouldn't have the most tackles etc.

As I said we did really well and probably the best we could have done. All I'm saying is it's weird that we downplay the offensive stats and put a lot of value on the defensive ones. Both of them are influenced the same amount by our defensive game plan. If our defensive stats had little to do with the way we played and we truly have the best defense, our offensive stats also should have little to do with the way we played and truly had the worst offense.

The truth however is somewhere in the middle, we don't have the best defence in the world (although a very good one) and we don't have the worst attacking play either (although it's not good either).

[arash123]

I agree with our offense looking pretty stagnant, with the level of our opponents being the main cause.

I am also reminded of this Bear Bryant quote, “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.”

[The]

Nonsense. Complete nonsense. And it's this childish stubbornness that makes people talk down to you. It's simply "loos bazi" as we say in Persian.
I addressed all the silly stuff about our "disastrous offense", "other pundits' view of our team", and "other teams' performance compared to our offense". I went into detail in each case, explaining why your interpretations are uninformed, naive or biased. If you really can't understand those explanations, it says a lot more about your intellect than it does about my points.

Other people here disagreed with me without being rude and condescending. You in particular changed the subject to be about me rather than Football. You tried to make it look like I was solely blaming CQ for the poor offensive effort, when I didn't even mention him in my original post.

You didn't address the fact that not a single pundit or former player was impressed with our offense. You just said pundit praised our defense, which I know, but I'm not talking about defense in this thread. They all said that Iran's defensive approach doesn't excuse the lack of shots and offensive effort.

You didn't address the fact that we weren't the only defensive team in this world cup, yet we have the worst offense (despite having good individual offensive talent).

[krol]

I don't see why you have the urge to point out the obvious.

Because some people sadly can't see it. As evidenced by me having to explain the same thing again!

All I'm saying is it's weird that we downplay the offensive stats and put a lot of value on the defensive ones.

No, it's not freaking "weird". Those offensive stats like possession and passing are bound to look "bad" because our offense is not built around them, but rather on letting the opponent have possession, then closing their passing lanes and forcing them to keep passing under pressure, looking to dispossess them and launch quick counterattacks as they try to shift back to defense. Just because those stats are "bad" doesn't mean our offense was bad, as evidenced by the fact that we had just as many close chances against Spain and Portugal as they had against us.

[Pedram123]

I don't get why people throw the "We are Iran we dont have the capability to play offensive football to go toe to toe with decent/top teams" - This might be true to an extent, but i insist, forget about Iran.. Forget about team melli.
Go ask the Portuguese about Queiroz. This is also a managerial thing - While i am not downplaying the wonderful things CQ has done for our football, I am simply highlighting, the guys belief and perspective on how football should be played, and it´s got nothing to do with what team he is managing. Their are coaches that have a similair perspective to him and there are coaches that have opposite perspectives than him.

[Scooter]

*Shaking my head*
So many hypercritical couch potatoes, here, who likely couldn't play pub-ball without having a heart attack.
Of COURSE our offense was wanting! We were playing tight to the middle, and waiting to win the ball, and then break on counters! And NO WAY in hell could we have success, otherwise. We don't have the tactical awareness to play like Spain (or similar teams) We just don't. That comes with more (i.e. MOST of our) players playing in top leagues.
For goodness sake, Mourinho won EPL titles with Chelsea by playing this style.

[shahname]

I think you highlight an important issue about TM. Offensively we were very poor. I opened a thread few days ago about CQ´s mistake and talked about it in that thread as well.

In my opinion, now that CQ is staying and hopefully for another 4 years, it is only natural that we demand or expect that CQ continues to develop our team further and the next natural step must be playing more fluent attacking football with more ball possession.

[krol]

Other people here disagreed with me without being rude and condescending. You in particular changed the subject to be about me rather than Football. You tried to make it look like I was solely blaming CQ for the poor offensive effort, when I didn't even mention him in my original post.

Stop constantly playing the victim when you don't get your way. And don't act like we haven't seen your posts for the past few months. You're one of the few who have been trying left and right to discredit this team and make things look far worse than they are. If you're not trolling you're either a highly negative pessimist or just another biased red fan.

You didn't address the fact that not a single pundit or former player was impressed with our offense. You just said pundit praised our defense...

No, I did not They praised our team overall and did not in any way put down our offense the way you implied. When Chris Sutton said Spain got lucky against us and that we can beat Portugal, did he mean our offense sucks? Give it up already.

You didn't address the fact that we weren't the only defensive team in this world cup, yet we have the worst offense (despite having good individual offensive talent).

Holy crap! Yes, I did genius! You really do deserve to be talked down to. Here's the goddamn post again:

Those other defensive teams weren't going up against TWO continental champions and the best national team of the last decade that is basically a Real Madrid/Barcelona hybrid! Our "weakest" opponent in this group was the champion of Africa that was also the ONLY team in the world to finish the qualifiers without conceding a single goal. That's how good their defense was. So please. Enough of this selective concern trolling...

And here's another post, this one to another person, explaining why our offensive stats looking "bad" doesn't necessarily mean we had a bad offense:

Those offensive stats like possession and passing are bound to look "bad" because our offense is not built around them, but rather on letting the opponent have possession, then closing their passing lanes and forcing them to keep passing under pressure, looking to dispossess them and launch quick counterattacks as they try to shift back to defense. Just because those stats are "bad" doesn't mean our offense was bad, as evidenced by the fact that we had just as many close chances against Spain and Portugal as they had against us.

[The]

*Shaking my head*
So many hypercritical couch potatoes, here, who likely couldn't play pub-ball without having a heart attack.
Of COURSE our offense was wanting! We were playing tight to the middle, and waiting to win the ball, and then break on counters! And NO WAY in hell could we have success, otherwise. We don't have the tactical awareness to play like Spain (or similar teams) We just don't. That comes with more (i.e. MOST of our) players playing in top leagues.
For goodness sake, Mourinho won EPL titles with Chelsea by playing this style.

Funny that you mention Mourinho, his teams were either leading the league or were in top 3 Goals scored during his time at Inter and Chelsea.

Playing defensively doesn't necessarily translated to being the worst offensive team.

[RaginG Inferno]

Krol, calm down. There's no need to descend to ad hominem attacks (which you initiated). It detracts from your otherwise good points.

[Philosophy_King]

Yea, we almost qualified, tough opponents, bacheha motchakereem, and all that Jazz, but here are some concerning stats:

Iran had the lowest pass completion (68%) of any team this world cup. Not even by a little. The next worst team was Iceland at 72 %, followed by Sweden at 78%. Also the least total passes With 436.

Iran also ranked last with 4 shots on net Total.

We also got dominated in possession in every game we played.

This isn't sustainable, and if it was not for a lucky last minute own goal against Morocco and a very questionable late Penalty against Portugal, Iran would be goalless this world cup.


Doesn't matter if it's CQ or someone else, but by the next world cup we really need to focus on building up plays and passing the ball more.

Sepas gozaram for recognizing this! Totally agree with you!

We were definitly one of the weakest Teams in terms of passing,possession
and build up.

[krol]

Funny that you mention Mourinho, his teams were either leading the league or were in top 3 Goals scored during his time at Inter and Chelsea.

Inter and Chelsea were loaded with stars compared to most teams they played against in the league. They were the "Portugal" and "Spain", the opponent was "Iran".

[krol]

Krol, calm down. There's no need to descend to ad hominem attacks (which you initiated). It detracts from your otherwise good points.

When adults supposedly near 30 years old and older keep repeating the same uninformed arguments after being repeatedly shown they're wrong, it's not "ad hominem" to bring it up to them. Being willfully ignorant and stubborn is not cute. And there's nothing wrong with being blunt about it as long as you respect the forum rules.

[The]

Stop constantly playing the victim when you don't get your way. And don't act like we haven't seen your posts for the past few months. You're one of the few who have been trying left and right to discredit this team and make things look far worse than they are. If you're not trolling you're either a highly negative pessimist or just another biased red fan.

No, I did not They praised our team overall and did not in any way put down our offense the way you implied. When Chris Sutton said Spain got lucky against us and that we can beat Portugal, did he mean our offense sucks? Give it up already.

Holy crap! Yes, I did genius! You really do deserve to be talked down to. Here's the goddamn post again:


And here's another post, this one to another person, explaining why our offensive stats looking "bad" doesn't necessarily mean we had a bad offense:

I'm not constantly playing Victim (I'm not Sardar). I'm just pointing out that you misrepresented what I said in my original post over and over and made the subject about CQ, PP fans and bunch of other crap not related to the actual game.
I'm neither trolling, or a pessimist. Just think it's important we acknowledge short comings of TM. Just because you choose to focus on the negative things I say and ignore the positive, doesn't mean I'm looking to make the Team look bad (a 68% pass completion rate and 4 shots on goal in 3 games will do that on it's own).

The justification had for our bad offense was that the teams we played were good. Well no crap, it's the world cup, basically every team is good. Morocco was in the same group as us, yet they managed to get more shots on net, and have a better passing percentage than us. South Korea played against good teams, same thing for them.

[The]

Inter and Chelsea were loaded with stars compared to most teams they played against in the league. They were the "Portugal" and "Spain", the opponent was "Iran".

I understand that, which is why bringing up Mourinho (who scooter brought up) isn't a good example to excuse the way we played. Playing Ultra-defensive will get you wins if you're team is packed with stars, not a good analogy when discussing Iran.