World Cup Qualifier: China - Iran; Info, Updates and Live Reports (06.09.2016)

[serghe]

Instagram is blocked in Shenyang. Maybe this will make our players more focused

You act as if Iranians do not know how to use VPNs.

[Keano]

One of my favorite games from Iran, very organized and efficient. Look at Dejagah and Shojaei's play

I think considering who our opponent was "Chile" this was TM's best game ever. Enjoyed watching this math so much.

I hope CQ won't start with Hajsafi, Rezaeiyan and Taremi. Would like to see Vourya Ghafouri, Milad Mohammadi and Ghoochannejad instead.

Also we dearly lack a playmaker in midfield, someone with individual skills who can create opportunities for our players up front. The only or I can think of to deliver these duties is Masoud Shojaei.


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[diz]

China has a goal of winning the WC in 2050. After reading this article, I think it's not only possible, it's inevitable.

China’s football revolution kicks into overdrive

http://soccer.nbcsports.com/2016/09/02/chinas-football-revolution-kicks-into-overdrive/?ocid=Yahoo&partner=ya5nbcs&yptr=yahoo

BEIJING (AP) As coaches take notes, teenagers dribble footballs through a course of cones on Ritan Middle School’s gleaming artificial field in eastern Beijing, part of a massive program to promote soccer as a pillar of China’s rise to global prominence.

The 14-year-old boys and girls were being scrutinized under a newly added section of Beijing’s high school entrance exam, which beginning this year includes an elective football skills test in addition to such standards as Chinese, math, and English.

While the skills tests comprise only a small part of the placement exam, the fact education officials tweaked a notoriously rigid standardized test is one sign of how thoroughly China is mobilizing under President Xi Jinping’s drive to overhaul the game domestically and turn the Chinese team into a World Cup winner by 2050.

The football revolution spans from schoolyards to the top professional league. Local officials tout how thousands of high schools are becoming government-designated football “priority” schools. Cities announce hundreds of football complexes being built every week.

Chinese clubs are paying record fees to woo stars away from Europe and boost interest in the domestic league. And in the past year alone, Chinese investors have spent a staggering $3 billion to buy stakes in European clubs, with the stated aim of bringing football know-how back to China.

“We’ve talked about football under several top leaders but until now, there has never been this will,” said Pang Xiaozhong, former director of the Institute of Sport Science, an arm of China’s state sports program. “It’s unprecedented.”

Boosting China’s standing in the game is part of Xi’s push to raise China’s global prestige. With the national men’s team ranked No. 78, a turnaround would be nothing short of cathartic. While the women’s team has often found international success, China’s men have qualified for only one World Cup, bouncing out of the 2002 competition without scoring a goal.

Decades after China’s government successfully created a Soviet-style sports juggernaut, emphasizing highly technical disciplines such as diving, the question is whether the sports-by-diktat approach can work for the world’s most popular game. Unlike sports such as gymnastics, in which elite state academies develop selected prospects from a young age, commentators say football success will require a huge player base and vibrant, structured youth leagues – all of which China is trying to create practically from scratch.

In May, the cabinet issued a 50-point plan that called on local and provincial governments to promote football by setting up school programs, creating amateur leagues, offering tax breaks for pitch construction and recruiting foreign coaches with the goal of establishing 70,000 new fields and producing 50 million school-age players by 2020.

In a top-down system under which the ruling Communist Party still issues five-year economic plans, this state-led mix of infrastructure investment and mass grassroots mobilization is precisely what Beijing sees as needed to bring home a World Cup trophy.

“In China, the role of the government is always the biggest and most effective,” Pang said. “Football is something we can grasp if we’re methodic.”

Although the government has not released cost estimates for its development plan, analysts say hundreds of millions could be spent over the next five years on facilities alone.

What has been made public, however, is the $300 million this year that Chinese Super League clubs have splashed out recruiting stars such as Ramires, Alex Teixeira, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Jackson Martinez and former Arsenal striker Gervinho. And that does not include the wages on offer at Chinese clubs, which are now some of the highest in the world.

Clubs have also splurged on high-profile coaches, including ex-Real Madrid and Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini, former Brazil boss Luiz Felipe Scolari and one-time England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson.

Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, said there’s no reason to doubt China could become a regional football superpower. But he warned there were similarities with the government’s approach to economic planning that, despite its successes, can lead to inefficiency or graft. One example is the wave of interest that followed the 2002 World Cup run, which quickly fizzled out when the domestic league was hit by rampant corruption scandals.

“The leadership sketches a hugely ambitious and yet ambiguous vision and people lower down the chain – government bureaus, provincial governments – and those hoping to curry favor, especially in business, pick it up and run with it,” Sullivan said. “The problem is everyone often runs in different directions.”

Chinese football investors are already scrambling to buy into storied clubs such as Inter Milan and AC Milan, sometimes speaking of those deals as patriotic buyers.

In a recent interview, Jiantong “Tony” Xia, who took over England’s Aston Villa in May, said a main objective was to eventually field Chinese players and establish academies.

“It’s been proven that buying foreign firms with know-how and then bringing that back to the domestic industry has been the most efficient route,” Xia said.

As China’s most powerful leader in decades, Xi’s personal influence on the promotion of football has been enormous.

The president makes no secret of his love for the game which he picked up as a child playing alongside the scions of other Communist Party leaders at the elite Beijing 101 Middle School.

A 1983 exhibition match between China and English club Watford was said to have left a particular impression on Xi. China was then just opening up to the outside world after decades of Maoism, and when Watford trounced the Chinese national team, Xi left the Beijing Workers Stadium fuming, childhood friend Nie Weiping recalled in an interview years later with state media.

“He felt hurt watching the match,” Nie was quoted as saying. “But he’s continued to always follow Team China.”

Those presidential concerns appear to be having a direct effect at the grassroots.

On the leafy Ritan Middle School campus, extracurricular director Xu Fuxing described how the public school’s budget has risen 25 percent since Xi’s administration made sports an educational priority.

The campus recently resurfaced an artificial field and Xu has hired youth football academy Huawen to train its students. Aside from offering traveling competitions that barely existed a few years ago, Huawen employs coaches such as Juan Varela, a former trainer with Atletico Madrid who moved to China earlier this year and works with help from translators.

Speaking over Varela’s cries of “Spread out! Spread out!” as eight-year-old kids swarmed after loose balls, Xu said the national plan’s key element is to encourage the formation of clubs and leagues to offer competitive experiences to young players.

Even small measures such as Beijing’s new football exam have encouraged kids to try the game and, as Xu said, “It symbolizes much more to come.”

[Leopard]

small bottled water is ok especially some brands that cost little more such as Watson's. All is done by robots.
The guys at the embassy should know more about food. There is a persian restaurant there in BJ named Rumi, just an hour from shenyang.
If you want to make life hard for arabs going to play there just tell them that pig sh...t is used as fertilizer for the vegetables. Maybe Qatar team will lose their match although the imported players will consume anything they find.
score will be 2-0 or 3-0 TM is Pahlevaan

[Doctor DOOM]

A win in china will tremendously jump our qualification chances. It's a much needed away win and that too EARLY in the campaign.
It is very effective to get as many points AS EARLY as possible.

If we get this win and if we assume we'd get the away win against syria, then beyond that we can rely on the ''win at home, draw away'' strategy and qualify with no stress

[Leopard]

Watching Korea-China match showed that the Korean team is very vulnerable, when you attack them from right and left they lose minds.
The chinese players can do well if they are not marked properly. they also play rough so better to pass quickly and pass them rather than getting tangled up. Their right back is bad and so is left back. The right back is too slow and left cannot read the mind of opponent and on crosses cannot place himself in the right place. if ball is brought from center a nice shot will do it unless the team is parked. must change tactic every 10 minutes so they do not know where the ball will come from.

[Leopard]

control emotions and do not give referee to do a ..... CQ also needs to control his temper. He needs to be patient. We have so many good players.. The ones who go in as subs no matter who they are , they can score. Be patient

[The Realist]

Everything you said is true, but Nekounam also made some offensive gestures and was described as taunting Qatar's bench. To be honest if we escape this mess with just Nekounam being fined and/or sanctioned and no one else...we should breath a sigh of relief. Knowing AFC they will bend to arab pressure and go hard on us.

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Agreed with minimum damage limitation strategy but if Neku was to take the full blame - he will take the full punishment and that pretty much covers his role for the entire qualifiers - killing his role and impacting on the team, he can be a great "mr motivator" for us on the sideline. I'm not even sure CQ is 100% with his health! Wish them both well anyway

[Nader25]

the chines got a real boost at the end of the game vs korea by scoring 2 goals, this can motivate them to start storming against TM. TM needs to
calm down the game and take the chinese back to the bitter reality.

[Bessos]

control emotions and do not give referee to do a ..... CQ also needs to control his temper. He needs to be patient. We have so many good players.. The ones who go in as subs no matter who they are , they can score. Be patient

I actually think it was smart of CQ to let go of his temper during the Iran-Qatar match because it puts pressure on the referee to make more calls in favour of Iran.

China has a goal of winning the WC in 2050. After reading this article, I think it's not only possible, it's inevitable.

Women's World Cup right?

Anyway, there is a rule in nature and you can see it most clearly in dogs. The dogs that bark the most, do not end up biting you. The dog that silently watches you is the one you need to be careful of.

Same thing with these ''sleeping giants'' bullshit we hear all the time. Not only in football, but also in politics and economics. Most of us probably know which countries I'm talking about, which are all ''bark'' and ''hype'' but will end up nowhere even by 2050.

Currently countries such as India and China are barking all the time, and the media is hyping them up like no other country, but they're nothing but distractions.

[O-ZoNe]

You can buy all sort of products in China. You can even get Fiji water there.

I remember in 1997 when Aust came to iran and brought their own water how insulted we all felt and so much hared was dished out to them. And how easily now we justify the same action.

We weren't offended because they brought their own water. Leading up to the match Terry Venables, Aussie players and media were calling Iran unsafe and a dangerous third world country. Similar to how the saudis have been acting of late. The issue of food and water was used to highlight how unsafe they felt in Iran and this was well documented and advertised around the world.

Most teams do this, for various reasons. Maybe those waters are premixed with stuff for training purposes...who knows.

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[Narse]

it shows rather how racist white people are. this is why what iran doing right now is not better what the white barbarians did back then.

[Narse]

now that you mention these australians, they also cooperated with the arabs in asian cup 2015 to get iran out. ben williams was the australian-arab-afc work in order to achieve this, in order for australia to win asian cup easier!

[Abtin]

[TheBoss]

remembering this classic match