I wanted to write this up to express the underlying issues we have had in the midfield for years which have never been addressed at a micro or a macro level.
The first thing you think of when you hear midfielder is different for everybody.
For some who idolize Zidane/Pirlo/Busquets , a midfielder is supposed to be an orchestrator of the strings of the rest of the team.
For some who idolize Kante or Casemiro , a midfielder is the warrior who shields the defense and allows the rest of the team to do its job.
For some who idolize Iniesta/Modric/Xavi, a midfielder is a maestro who maintains possession and creates chances.
In Iranian football, we have had lite versions of some of these roles in our midfields of the past.
Bagheri and Teimourian certainly met the role of destroyer.
Nekounam helped close off passing lanes, distribute the ball, and even added a threat on set pieces both outside the box and in the box.
More forward thinking players like Ali Karimi, Navidkia, and Jabbari were players we could consider creators.
Iranian football has usually emphasized individual play over a team collective for most of its existence, bar a period under Quieroz where team structure was everything. He took out our creative players to make a defensive unit, snubbing Khalatbari/ young Azmoun/Ghoddos for more conservative options sometimes with merit and sometimes being a deadly mistake.
Since the 2006 World Cup, we have not had a midfield that has been truly dominant in posession. That is an 18 year span for which we have had a dropoff in quality in our midfield that has never returned to the previous level. Putting Branko and his horrid team chemistry aside, we did boast players like Karimi, Zandi, Ando, Nekounam to run a midfield. Now even the specialized roles our midfielders had have become blurred.
Our play evolved to be more reliant on our forwards and wingers as the creative outlets which coincided with a sudden drop in our midfield quality. I'm sure older members remember the nightmare of having a Pejman Nouri in midfield trying to create chances. For this period, it seemed like any goal we scored was off the bounce of the ball or a striker/winger doing a solo run.
Unfortunately, time does not stand still and the rest of the world from Qatar to Tajikistan to the US have produced academies to teach the basics of football to the younger players and the baseline level of play of these countries has gone up. Our country still boasts incredible talent on the inside so we have stayed afloat, albeit without much forward progress.
If we look at the midfield in recent years, its purpose has changed like a pendulum. Under Quieroz, our midfield existed solely to negate the other team or press enough to win it back and get the ball up to forwards. In AC 2019, Dejagah was running the strings as a CM, a position he usually never played prior. In more recent times, Ghoddos has been made our creative outlet. Ezatolahi has stayed consistently in our holding role, getting by on his reputation as a Nekounam regen and his technical ability/passing. Whether he has made the position his own or owns it because of the lack of other options is something many people argue.
Unfortunately in the 18 years our midfield has fallen off, other teams are producing more well-rounded midfielders and we are struggling to win battles more often in the midfield. Many times in recent years a midfield containing Ezatolahi and another DM have been so slow that turnovers have been frequent and counters deadly. Ghoddos on several ocassions has been tasked with being a ballwinner, something he does out of versatility but not his natural strong suit.
If we are going to be competitive in world football going forward, we need major changes in our infrastructure, training, and academies to make the players we need.
A lot of Iranian players have made it as far as they have on individual talent and still lack basic fundamentals even when on the national team. Things like effective trapping, scanning before receiving a pass, bringing a ball under control as soon as possible, and passing into space are modern basics of the game that our midfielders do not regularly do. We have lost many midfield battles as a result. Pep Guardiola has set the trend for recycling a ball back into the midfield and restarting attacks, once one fails . We lack the players to do this and if it doesn't work the first time, we tend to let the other team try until we get the ball back.
We do not have the money or available foreign professionals Qatar or Saudi does, but establishing academies where players are taught these modern skills to maintain possession under a press(which we have always struggled against), or off the ball movement to make space to beat the line should be a matter of urgency. We should attempt to copy the model of a team like Croatia who despite being a country of only 4 million, consistently makes midfielders that can retain possession even against the world's best. Whether they have a solid striker at the time matters little. Raising the bar of our midfield will shield both our defense and make up for any periods where we lack a striker(such as the impending retirement of Azmoun/Taremi in the next few years).
We are hopefully going to World cup in 2026 where the teams may still be significantly younger/fresher/faster than us, and only time will tell if we could offset that with experience. What Iran does beyond 2026 will be largely dependent on whether we could keep pace with the ever evolving role of a midfielder. If we stay stagnant and just pick whoever is most technical there regardless of structure without any specialized roles, we will continue to fall behind until one day we will be the ones defending for dear lives against other Asian midfields.
The first thing you think of when you hear midfielder is different for everybody.
For some who idolize Zidane/Pirlo/Busquets , a midfielder is supposed to be an orchestrator of the strings of the rest of the team.
For some who idolize Kante or Casemiro , a midfielder is the warrior who shields the defense and allows the rest of the team to do its job.
For some who idolize Iniesta/Modric/Xavi, a midfielder is a maestro who maintains possession and creates chances.
In Iranian football, we have had lite versions of some of these roles in our midfields of the past.
Bagheri and Teimourian certainly met the role of destroyer.
Nekounam helped close off passing lanes, distribute the ball, and even added a threat on set pieces both outside the box and in the box.
More forward thinking players like Ali Karimi, Navidkia, and Jabbari were players we could consider creators.
Iranian football has usually emphasized individual play over a team collective for most of its existence, bar a period under Quieroz where team structure was everything. He took out our creative players to make a defensive unit, snubbing Khalatbari/ young Azmoun/Ghoddos for more conservative options sometimes with merit and sometimes being a deadly mistake.
Since the 2006 World Cup, we have not had a midfield that has been truly dominant in posession. That is an 18 year span for which we have had a dropoff in quality in our midfield that has never returned to the previous level. Putting Branko and his horrid team chemistry aside, we did boast players like Karimi, Zandi, Ando, Nekounam to run a midfield. Now even the specialized roles our midfielders had have become blurred.
Our play evolved to be more reliant on our forwards and wingers as the creative outlets which coincided with a sudden drop in our midfield quality. I'm sure older members remember the nightmare of having a Pejman Nouri in midfield trying to create chances. For this period, it seemed like any goal we scored was off the bounce of the ball or a striker/winger doing a solo run.
Unfortunately, time does not stand still and the rest of the world from Qatar to Tajikistan to the US have produced academies to teach the basics of football to the younger players and the baseline level of play of these countries has gone up. Our country still boasts incredible talent on the inside so we have stayed afloat, albeit without much forward progress.
If we look at the midfield in recent years, its purpose has changed like a pendulum. Under Quieroz, our midfield existed solely to negate the other team or press enough to win it back and get the ball up to forwards. In AC 2019, Dejagah was running the strings as a CM, a position he usually never played prior. In more recent times, Ghoddos has been made our creative outlet. Ezatolahi has stayed consistently in our holding role, getting by on his reputation as a Nekounam regen and his technical ability/passing. Whether he has made the position his own or owns it because of the lack of other options is something many people argue.
Unfortunately in the 18 years our midfield has fallen off, other teams are producing more well-rounded midfielders and we are struggling to win battles more often in the midfield. Many times in recent years a midfield containing Ezatolahi and another DM have been so slow that turnovers have been frequent and counters deadly. Ghoddos on several ocassions has been tasked with being a ballwinner, something he does out of versatility but not his natural strong suit.
If we are going to be competitive in world football going forward, we need major changes in our infrastructure, training, and academies to make the players we need.
A lot of Iranian players have made it as far as they have on individual talent and still lack basic fundamentals even when on the national team. Things like effective trapping, scanning before receiving a pass, bringing a ball under control as soon as possible, and passing into space are modern basics of the game that our midfielders do not regularly do. We have lost many midfield battles as a result. Pep Guardiola has set the trend for recycling a ball back into the midfield and restarting attacks, once one fails . We lack the players to do this and if it doesn't work the first time, we tend to let the other team try until we get the ball back.
We do not have the money or available foreign professionals Qatar or Saudi does, but establishing academies where players are taught these modern skills to maintain possession under a press(which we have always struggled against), or off the ball movement to make space to beat the line should be a matter of urgency. We should attempt to copy the model of a team like Croatia who despite being a country of only 4 million, consistently makes midfielders that can retain possession even against the world's best. Whether they have a solid striker at the time matters little. Raising the bar of our midfield will shield both our defense and make up for any periods where we lack a striker(such as the impending retirement of Azmoun/Taremi in the next few years).
We are hopefully going to World cup in 2026 where the teams may still be significantly younger/fresher/faster than us, and only time will tell if we could offset that with experience. What Iran does beyond 2026 will be largely dependent on whether we could keep pace with the ever evolving role of a midfielder. If we stay stagnant and just pick whoever is most technical there regardless of structure without any specialized roles, we will continue to fall behind until one day we will be the ones defending for dear lives against other Asian midfields.
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