Is Queiroz failing?

[Doctor DOOM]

Now that the game vs lebanon is done and suted and we have done what is necessary (score 4), I think CQ can proceed to the next step by applying pressure on qataris and bringing up their reputation, rising status in asia, their ambitions, their pride and most importantly the 2022 WC prospects and keep going at it, pumping them up and raising the awareness on that game (as most asia will be focused on our crucial game and may forget about this one).

But in presence of int'l press and not just some silly iranian rags only.

come on CQ, this is the final stretch. I am sure you can take care of this tactic too.

[Doctor DOOM]

^^^

That is incorrect. The referee in that game was Yuichi Nishimura. Masaki Toma was the referee in the Iran-Indonesia match which took place in Tehran.

oh, ok. I thought it was the other chap. someone in general forum said it was.
anyway, whoever the ref, now he will be a bit more focused on the matter of time wasting.


**************

@ ZZ's list of CQ's bright lights:

I agree on some, but I find it a bit hard to agree on a few.

like his tactical variety. I'd say basically he is a defensive coach with defensive tactics. yes, he may have shown a little variety WITHIN A DEFENSIVE framework, but I have not seen any aggression or attacking football from him.
he is very reserved and cautious. which may be handy against bigger and tougher teams. But to be like that against smaller, weaker teams or when the objective of the game is different? that's just not on.

"fearlessness" especially in the matter of youth? I hardly think so.

"positive attitude"? behavioral? I would agree. But tactically and football wise? I doubt it. he's quite pessimistic and defensive.
however, this is a double edged sword. as BL put it, he comes with a baggage of arrogance and ego (that at times isnt even justified, imo)




and I feel the moment we praise him for something, we tend to wash over many other negatives or blow some other things out of proportion in our delight and exuberance!!!
looking into my eyes? bro, I dont care if he looks at my knees (or anywhere else) as long as he does the job he was tasked with CORRECTLY.
Fact is he has faltered and made what was promised to be an easy qualification campaign, a very torturous and hard one! he also has faltered in rejuvenating our TM (but at this late stage, there's no point asking him to do it now. lets at least get the WCQ's done right).
THAT, for me is more important than whether he looks me in the eye (and says whatever) or not.


lets not forget, we're still in the soup (no thanks to very weak games against lebanon, qatar & uzbeks at home). and it's not as if he's broken a giant's tool by defeating qatar!!!! especially when the goal came off an accidental recochet rather than a rehearsed move.

so lets dial down our exuberance and wait to see if he can make amends for his slip ups earlier in the campaign first.
I hope he does.
he can start by defeating a demoralized, further weakened and already eliminated asian minnow by at least 3 goals.

[BacheLot]

I personaly have liked CQ from the start....
I noticed his hands on appraoch,
his no-nounsense attitude,
his criticisms of IFF,
his control of Media,
his deciplining the players,
his asking help from fellow coaches,
his interdependency to the league,
his relationship to league coaches,
his attempt to bring new legioners,
his testing of different styles of play,
his fearlessness to play new players,
his advices for future of Iranian football,
his positive attitude,
his constant demand from Iranian officials to do more,
his cowboy attitude toward FIFA,
his intelegence,
his ,looking into your eye, attitude.
and , his devotion.
.
.................................Had the club league teams helped him to have all his domestic players ready and healthy,for the first Lebanon game..( as well as not missing the legioners,for that game ).......we would have been sitting on the top of the group by now !
Considering the mess,Ali Daei and Ghotbi left him with,CQ has been positive for us....and it appears,he finaly has found the right Roster, chemistry and style of play for games ahead,which is true to his own style coaching as well as fitting with Iranian football.

i agree to the Bold from the above..!! i would add another that with him at helm it halted the exuberant amount of partibazi which brought a bunch undeserving players to tm..!! That was one of the biggest reasons i wanted an independent minded, high caliber Foreigner coach to take over in the first place ..!!

i cant say i'd really consider him an astute and accomplished tactician..! overall, he hasnt even proven to have a good eye for young talents and up until recently, where out of Pure desperation didnt alter his tactics nor give any reasonable playing chances to youngins or anybody besides his aging favorites...!! he is in fact a bit of a arrogant kale shagh who refused to make any significant changes to his failed repeated game approaches, and squad selection until he was forced by injuries, retirements, disciplinary-absentees ...!!

on the last statement, lets hope so...!! this last game vs gutter was the lone time that ive witnessed him really taking a somewhat different tactical approach to tm games and flirt with a relative experimental lineups..!! lets hope the success and good performance in that game would also serves as a revelation for him to be more open to criticism and not become a too predictable coach..!!
PS
Im still disappointed with his flaky substitutions and timing for them, which obviously proves his game time assessments arent really of the highest caliber of first class international coaches, that he surely thinks he is..!!

Lets hope we see another good performance vs lebonon, so i can also become more optimistic as you..!!

[K. Nader]

^^^

That is incorrect. The referee in that game was Yuichi Nishimura. Masaki Toma was the referee in the Iran-Indonesia match which took place in Tehran.

[Doctor DOOM]

^ yes, bro. apparently it is the same chap who officiated the tashkent game.
And that could go either way. the least is we know he is error prone!!
secondly, he isnt shy to whistle against the hosts or even discount their legitimate goal. so there's cause for worry.

nevertheless, I beleive lebanon is all crippled and demolished by the time they actually kick off. So I dont expect a great resistance or too many heriocs from them, try as they might though



on CQ:
he seems to be good at some things and not so good at others. He obviously learned most of these tricks and tactics from the big man, fergie, who is known for such things. But this is only one aspect of coaching.
he has shown vulnerabilities in a few other aspects and areas of coaching.

perhaps it is the "assistant coach" syndrome where the individual doesnt make a full transformation from a successful assistant to a successful head coach

[Mansoor]

I agree Peyman jaan. The good news is the ref is from Japan and that "should" help as well.

[zzgloo]

I personaly have liked CQ from the start....
I noticed his hands on appraoch,
his no-nounsense attitude,
his criticisms of IFF,
his control of Media,
his deciplining the players,
his asking help from fellow coaches,
his interdependency to the league,
his relationship to league coaches,
his attempt to bring new legioners,
his testing of different styles of play,
his fearlessness to play new players,
his advices for future of Iranian football,
his positive attitude,
his constant demand from Iranian officials to do more,
his cowboy attitude toward FIFA,
his intelegence,
his ,looking into your eye, attitude.
and , his devotion.
.
.................................Had the club league teams helped him to have all his domestic players ready and healthy,for the first Lebanon game..( as well as not missing the legioners,for that game ).......we would have been sitting on the top of the group by now !
Considering the mess,Ali Daei and Ghotbi left him with,CQ has been positive for us....and it appears,he finaly has found the right Roster, chemistry and style of play for games ahead,which is true to his own style coaching as well as fitting with Iranian football.

[Doctor DOOM]

CQ at it again.
I like, I like

putting pressure on the refs to clamp down on grass rolling and time wasting. Lets hope it has the desired effect

I guess it was high time we got a whiff of this "professionalism" his supporters keep throwing around.

[yashar_fasihnia]

im pretty sure we played 4-2-3-1 and khosro was playing instead of ashkan az the right midfielder behind gucci. jabbari was in the middle and masoud on the left.

had ashkan been in the team, ashkan would play RM and khosro behind him as RB.

montazeri was our RB, sadeghi and hosseini our CBs and beygzadeh our left back which is pretty much esteghlals defensive set up except hanif plays instead of jalal hosseini in SS. Ando replaced samuel, shojaei replaced akbarpour/borhani and gucci replaced majidi/hatami.

it was the same formation and set up of esteghlal except with better players in some of the positions

the only problem was the midfielders were not pushing up as 2nd and 3rd waves of attacks which ghalenoi's esteghlal does, but maybe carlos had instructed the defenders to hold the defense line back and as a result our midfielders had to stay behind and didnt have enough stamina or speed to cover the huge space between defense line and gucci which kind of makes sense given the qataris fast and tiny players could outrun our big but slow defenders at ease if given the space.

[Doctor DOOM]

I disagree about the formation being defensive. Having 4 big and tall defenders does no mean that the formation is defensive. At moments we were playing 4-1-4-1. Before we score the goal we had 1 player in the box, 4 behind the box with nekounam behind them and add to that Pejman or Beikzadeh. Thats plenty ofensive in my view. This formation was balanced enough IMHO. But thats not all, our formation was also changing to 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and 4-2-4 at times and it was a pleasant surprise to see this much technical discipline in our team and that can come only with European coaches.

How can we predict or find out the true intention (strategy) of a coach?
instead of looking at numbers on a sheath of paper, we shd look at the players chosen. THAT would give us a better idea, dont you agree?
next indication is the TASKS asked of the players.
then finally, we must observe HOW the players play, which shd normally reflect the orders by the coach. for instance, if you are a player who CAN attack or cross or dribble inside , but are ordered to refrain from it, then in that particular game, you are a DEFENSIVE player (beikzadeh had such orders, for example)


besides, given the players and where & how they played, I dont think the formation was 4-1-4-1. it was more like 3-6-1 (or more precisely, 3-5-1-1, with shojaei given the task of connecting the midfield to our bacheh ghorbati ... since we had abandoned poor RGN )





we had FIVE actual defenders (heidari, montazeri, sadeghi, hosseini, beikzadeh) plus TWO defensive mids (nekounam & ando)
that is 7 out of 10 players are defensive players, which means 70% of the team.
so one can hardly say we werent defensive. nor can anyone claim it was "balanced".



beikzadeh hardly joined any attacks. neither did nekounam. nor ando. of all the 7 defensive players, only Heidari ventured a bit forward and joined attacks.

[Doctor DOOM]

On subject of Shojaei Peyman jaan, I believe most football teams, in particular Iranian teams that are not capable of fast passing game like our exceptional recent U22 team, must have at least one player that is capable of holding to the ball with his technique to control the match offensively and push the defenders back.

Pure my opinion, and Shojaei discussion can go either way because it is a matter of opinion.

That is why he was kept in the game to the end, because what he did to get on your nerve was actually part of Carlos plan (!), and they both stayed with that game plan to the end, simply because that game plan in whole was working to get the result Iran desperately needed in this match with her back to the wall.

come on mate, we can hardly say his loss of ball, bad or poor passes, turn overs, bad tackles and most importantly, the penalty were "part of CQ's plan". and if THAT was indeed CQ's plan, then I must say there's something seriously wrong with his planning process.

neither can anyone claim all those came as a surprise. since he has been doing pretty much the same for more than a year (since his return from injury). his weaknesses and liabilities have been discussed in the past year since his return. and I still dont see any palpable improvement in any of those!

slowing down the game and holding onto the ball is good ... AS LONG AS IT SERVES THE TACTIC.
but when your team is moving up and needs to inject pace into the transition, then that holding onto the ball or slowing down actually HURTS the directive and objective of the team.
that's why I said certain players have certain uses for certain situations. (just like everything else in life. you cant have your soup with a fork, nor cut your stake with a spoon). similarly, until shojaei learns how to defend (merely running isnt going to cut it at NATIONAL TEAM LEVEL. you gotta make it count) or tackle without fouling or worse, getting cards and giving penalties, and until he learns to use pace and applies it to his dribbling skills, his uses will be (shd be) limited to very specific situations such as when we are leading a game and we need to kill off the pace of the game or hold the ball in the opponents' half or draw fouls to kill off time, ... .

but seeing what he is capable of AT THE MOMENT (not talking in general terms, nor am I referring to years gone by. NOW & PRESENT), he isnt the type of player a coach shd start a game with. Unless the objective of a game for us is to kill off the game from the get go. which is an absurd situation unless we're playing spain or brazil and want to restrict their trouncing/thrashing us to single digits.

[Doctor DOOM]

It is interesting to note that each match we have had our guards up, first Uzbek match and Korea match and now this Qatar match, we have come out with our "only" victories of our group matches. Each time we have gone in to dictate the game offensively, we have lost (to Uzbek in Azadi and Lebanon) or have tied (Qatar in Azadi)!

Of course part of that has to do with Carlos' selection of players and formation, and tactics, but hey we are still with the same coach and we have to accept that is what we are going to get with his approach.

Everybody has a system that may work for him, and seems like with "Carlos system", the Qatar's match game plan and tactics WORKED!

----

absolutely. merely having the guards up in tashkent, for example, was not the reason we came out with 3 points. not only they scored a legitimate goal on us, they were all over our team for most of the game and we simply got lucky. so that means we cant rationalize it by "guard up = win"
more or less the same thing against koreans where we got lucky a couple of their shots went wide and a couple more were handled by rahmati. so that's hardly about having our guards up, than getting lucky the koreans didnt bring their shooting boots to tehran

and definitely the tactics, formation and selection have DIRECT impact on a team's performance and fortunes.
if we waste a spot on a striker with dysmal strike rate we are knowingly reducing our chances of a good display and a win.
if we fail to replace a low performing player (no matter how big the name or rep), we are knowingly reducing our chances of a win.
if we continue to stick to a certain formation that doesnt coincide with the needs of a game (eg; a defensive one for a must win game, or vice versa), then we are directly influencing the outcome (barring accidents and luck, of course)

[Doctor DOOM]

Merci Peyman jaan.

On the subject of "if" (the ball was not reflected for RGN), to be fair we have to consider all such ifs and I have Iran winning that match 4-2 on the ifs, counting only the 100% situations:

If Shojaei's FK had gone in few inches different, the goalie could have not saved it, and if not, as it happened and "the after" corner kick, then if Gucci's header was aimed on the ground first, it would have gone in.

Same with Shojaei's trap in the box, if he had his body a bit to the right after the trap, he would have either got the PK or scored, or even the defender might have forced the ball in.

Same goes for Gucci's one on one, if he had done the same thing he did with the goal he scored, and would tap the ball in quickly to his right rather than moving with it to the left.

And of course, Qater's hitting the cross, and last minutes header on corner kick that Ahmadi handed to Qataris players in the box. Then, with all the "obvious ifs", we would have had 4-2 Iran.

This is not counting other series of events, such as Shojaei's fake on corner kick and bringing the ball in to the box. If someone was there around penalty marker, it would have been another Nekunam to Korea score.

And that first if about Shojaei's FK actually tells us about facts of football. If the FK would have gone in, then Gucci's header would have not been even there to count, as the FK resulted the corner kick and series of events, leading to that header.

In fact, if it wasn't for bunch of Lebanon-Iran match ifs, we could have qualified in next match w/o even being worried about Korea match.

The fact is, football is series of events, and moments dictates the outcome of the game (in most games). Such moments can change the whole structure of game plan, subs, results of next matches effecting the standing and so on.

And that is why you often find coaches to be "too" cautious or conservative, as their livelihood and jobs depends on these "moments" and "ifs" w/ them only standing outside the field and have absolutely no power to have "direct" and physical presence inside the field to influence their own future.

I heard some after match comments from the fans about "what if" Qatar's cross bar shot had gone in, and how it would have effected the match, but in reality, these "ifs" are great for sake of argument and can be used to favor one opinion or the other.

In real football though, it is the series of events and such ifs that shapes the outcome of the game in every aspect from results to game plans and subs and many micro events. And that's what makes football the most exciting and interesting sport in the world.

---

I agree that there is little use of delving into all the "if"s and "but"s (as they say, "if pigs could fly ..."). That's why we must base our observations on reality of what actually happens.
(however it doesnt hurt to include the if and but situations to know how the team creates or moves or to find certain patterns or tactics. irrespective of whether a goal is scored or not)

but as you said, the fact of the matter is that we won the game based on an accident. whether it sits well with us or not, that is how we got the precious 3 points. This doesnt downgrade the team's performance or anything. But serves as a reminder that we must be able to PROACTIVELY create chances and win games, rather than wait for accidents and lucky ricochets (much to the chagrine of CQ's die hard fans).
in other words, if I were a lebanese, instead of pumping my chest about the draw, I'd be scared shitless seeing how the koreans hit the post several times, the ball getting cleared off the line, the keeper making incredible and impossible saves countless times, ... . But some fans see the score board and forget the horrors they faced in the game (slightly similar to what some iranian fans fool themselves about our two wins in tashkent and iran against korea!)





one use of reviewing all the 'ifs' and 'buts' is to find weaknesses and strengths of a player or a team or tactics, ... .

for example the way shojaei squandered that golden chance in front of the goal, it serves to remind all his proponents that if they rationalize his starting spot by "but he plays in la liga" (!!!!), then by the same rationale, one must expect far better reaction and turn out from a la liga player. in other words, you cant have all the privileges without the responsibilities. So this is certainly worth noting and discussing.

or the same thing with the qatar hittng our post. we must review this to find how they got through the defense and get 1 on 1 with ahmadi and how to make sure it doesnt happen again.

[Mr.Good]

I disagree about the formation being defensive. Having 4 big and tall defenders does no mean that the formation is defensive. At moments we were playing 4-1-4-1. Before we score the goal we had 1 player in the box, 4 behind the box with nekounam behind them and add to that Pejman or Beikzadeh. Thats plenty ofensive in my view. This formation was balanced enough IMHO. But thats not all, our formation was also changing to 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and 4-2-4 at times and it was a pleasant surprise to see this much technical discipline in our team and that can come only with European coaches.
After we scored the goal, we did not retract and we were putting pressure on Qatar in their field. At few moments on Qatar Goal Kicks I saw 4-2-4 formation, with 4 players inside the Qatari half.

People also tend to not see the amount of work that Shojaei, and Ando have in the defensive phase of the game and how much pressure they put on the other team.

[Mansoor]

Dear:
I agree with your points, credit to all players and coaches.
Base on past conduct I did not think CQ team will win, and I am so happy about very important victory. This victory changes landscape and can give new direction to TM.

Beside points that you listed I think one significant factor was what appeared to be change of attitude and policy by CQ . It seems to me for whatever reasons he took his assignment more serious at last. May be hard to tell and never be able to tell for sure the effect of Vingada on TM against Qatar , but fact remain CQ invited his friend and season coach to help and it seems was positive move. It appeared to be good distraction on both ends. If nothing else helped CQ personally. Judging from the way left stands after the game, sharing their joys, whomever’s idea was , it worked.

Very good point. I missed that one.

And 100% agree with you on Carlos' focus. I have been getting the same vibes from him, both at the time he seemed frustrated and losing motivation few months ago, and how focused he has been recently.