Iran vs Montenegro Player Ratings | Post Match Discussion

[Nariman]

Happy to see that likes of Mehdi Torabi, who was injured for a long time, and Ramin Rezaeian, no club for several weeks, still managed to make it into the starting lineup and proved their quality once again. While Torabi smoothly assisted the 1st goal, Rezaeian was involved in both goals with 2 smart header passes.

- Respect to Ali Karimi as well, what a perfect long pass for the 2nd goal.
- Ezatolahi's FK rocket reminded me of Bagheri.
- Azmoun was one huge threat, could have scored 2 more! - but one hit the bar and the other was saved.

I understand that Beiranvand gets questioned ( I am also not fully comfortable with him), but today he had several great saves. Dejagah should be blamed much more for losing the ball like that, but since he is always "head & shoulders" above others, no matter how he plays, he remains immune towards criticism. Likes of Shojaei got bashed & insulted for much less... This is no hate towards Dejagah, but rather we fans should be fair and not focus on "names" only.

Last but not least, if the referee doesn’t finish the game Milad Mohammadi would probably run until the next morning.

and f*** IRIB.

[Iran_19]

Goalkeeper is the only position we struggle as we talk, otherwise we have lots of depth in other positions. Even in CD with PAG and Mohammad Ansari.

[inarsenewetrust]

Read again!

im not disagreeing with you ! Chill.

[KeonKish]

Player ratings:

Beiranvand - 7, Solid, besides the one mistake he had.

Rezaeian - 8 Showed that in terms of offensive offering, he's got a lot to offer, both goals came off his great headers, they had great pace and accuracy. Showed a great workmate and showed that he's been training to stay fit despite his club issues.

Pouraliganji - 5, very unfair red card, he has some bad days like this, but most of the time he's a lot less scrappy than this.

Montazeri - 7 solid

Aghaei - 6.5 Defended well but didn't seem in sync.

Pourghaz - 6.5, decent job defending

Hajsafi - 5.5 Nothing much besides that one really nice pass.

Ezatollahi - 6.5 Below his potential, not crazy bad or anything though.

Dejagah - 7 did well besides that one mistake.

Torabi - 8.5 Torabi needs to get out of iran ASAP, he might not play in a nice league, but he's WAY more effective than jahanbakhsh, he made the montenegrin defence look like idiots.

Mohammadi - 7 he did alright, but I'm kinda confused on what position he was playing today????

Karimi - 8 What a transformation after playing in croatia. He is very composed, very calm, and his pass reminded me of pirlo, inch perfect!

Pahlevan - 6.5 good hustle and positioning

Ansarifard - 6 Kinda pulled a classic karim today.

Azmoun - 9 Two stellar goals, with a chance for a few more. Put jovetic in his pocket.

Ghoochannejad - 7 Good hustle, didn't get as many opportunities as azmoun, he seemed to be playing kind of on the wing??



Overall thoughts:

Montenegro is a mid level, solid, european team, They have players in very good teams, much better than ours.

They had a lot to show in terms of attack, and we were able to contain them.

We had some issues in the midfield and I think you could see the gap left by ebrahimi today, this lead to most of their chances. Hajsafi needs to step up.

We did much better offensively today and IMO torabi and azmoun link up really well together, they were constantly creating trouble.

We showed better fitness and it showed toward the end of the game, montenegro was out of breath and out of ideas, even when we had 10 men. we stayed calm and focused.


its such a great feeling to know that we have so many options in so many positions.

its great to know that if one of our strikers has a bad day, we have 4 to choose from.

and in the midfield we aren't doing bad either.

WITH ebrahimi back in the picture we will have

Ezatollahi, Karimi, Ebrahimi, and Shojaei, not bad at all.

Im confident we will beat uzbekistan.


I give a lot of respect to montenegro not only for showing great sportsmanship and manners, but for taking the friendly seriously and playing with their best players.
hope they can qualify to the WC.

[The Realist]

he actually was good with his catches, and other punches, and fantastic with shot stopping. This was a bad mistake, which he will learn from. exactly what friendlies are for...

Read again!

[inarsenewetrust]

As a former goaly myself, I can see his intermittent fault, there are times that he is instinctively confused wether to punch the ball or catch it and that's when he does neither and pushes the ball into the 18th yard box.
He is obviously not doing this deliberately- more work with Gaspar would hopefully close this wrongful habit!?

he actually was good with his catches, and other punches, and fantastic with shot stopping. This was a bad mistake, which he will learn from. exactly what friendlies are for...

[The Realist]

Am I the only one who is not convinced by Beiranvand? He looks shaky and far from solid when it comes to crosses and we saw that on the first goal. We saw that in Persepolis last games as well. He is pretty solid when it comes to shots but I get nervous everytime the other team crosses...

As a former goaly myself, I can see his intermittent fault, there are times that he is instinctively confused wether to punch the ball or catch it and that's when he does neither and pushes the ball into the 18th yard box.
He is obviously not doing this deliberately- more work with Gaspar would hopefully close this wrongful habit!?

[Abtin]

holy shit ur right. That is from the high end template, not the cheap regista one...We are moving towards a full sponsorship I think.

I think Adidas is just waiting for us to qualify, and then sign the full deal.

[inarsenewetrust]

holy shit ur right. That is from the high end template, not the cheap regista one...We are moving towards a full sponsorship I think.

[04041374]

Adidas kits seem new to me

[maniei]

One of the best test matches in a very long time.

Beiranvand - 4: There are enough goalkeepers in Iran capable of amazing saves, but who cant catch the fucking ball and are insecure. He had 3 huge blunders to the goal conceded. I like him, but I'm afraid he is not good enough for TM at this point. We need a world class goali, he is not (but who is in Iran?).

Rezaeian - 8: Great game defensively and offensively. His crosses are not great yet. He needs to work on them
Montazeri - 7: Not as excellent as usual. He will probably step it up in more important occasions.
Pouraliganji - 6: Was active, unlucky in a few scenes. Unfortunate red card.
Aghaei - 5: Not a good game. He seemed slower than the rest and physically weaker. It got better the second half we he got help from Mimo

Torabi - 8: Great game, great assist. He deserves to play in Europe. Good thing CQ played him 90mins so he can get exposure after his long injury and make it to Europe this summer afterall.
Dejagah - 7: An absolutely OK match by him. Felt good to have him around after a long time. It was abvious he wasnt at 100%, but he contributed good set pieces.
Ezzatolahi - 8: He has so much potential its incredible. What he still can improve is his effectiveness upfront. Also he needs to get more confident and present on the field in order to drag the game to himself and dirigate, like Nekounam used to.
Hajisafi - 6: It began as another of his excellent, flawless matches fabregas style, untill he got injured. His injury exposed us during the phase Montenegro pushed that lead to the equalizer.

Azmoun - 9: Man of the match! If he converted that 1 on 1 vs the goali, it would have been a 10.
Ansarifard - 5: Was unlucky on the left wing. Montenegro closed the room down, unlike against Qatar where he had more space. With Azmoun performing again, Ansarifard is his replacement for a central striker.

Ali Karimi - 9: Wow! What a mature performance by him. He looked like one of the pillars of our game. In fact that was like his first real TM match. Especially he seems to be exactly what we might have been missing in central midfield. I'm very excited about him.
Ghochannejad - 7: Almost scored again from his very limited oppurtunities.
Mohammadi - 8: He is such a gem. you can sense right away he is something special everytime he gets the ball.
Pahlevan - 5: He is not bad, but lets skip to Shekari right away.
Pourghaz - nr: Didnt see enough to rate. Generally its good to have him around. He is a good replacement for DM and CD, and always seems to do his job just fine.

[MR.S]

...and those days where gone when TM would crumble with just 1-2 players missing...Thank you CQ!

[04041374]

PAG is banned for the next friendly game according to FIFA statues

[mayhem]

A lot of positives. Iran has better chance to score when the play at the back, pull the opponents out and place long balls towards the wings. Both goals came from long balls to the wingers.

I blame the goal on Dejagah, we cleared a dangerous attack, then ball came to Azmoun who gave a nice header to Dejagah and a counter was on, then he just gave it away trying to dribble, which led to the goal.

Aghaei was a great hustler but his vision was very poor, reminds me of Rezaei. Runs a lot into good positions but can't find a player with his passes.

Gucci really needs to improve his hold up play. So many times just losing it pointlessly, trying to make a cute pass or just being weak on the ball.

[arasradio]

I only know one word in their language which is "doboro" meaning good. And it seemed like they were really praising Beiranvand for having a good performance a lot. Also, they mentioned our famous players (Mahdavikia, Ali Karimi, Ali Daei, Azizi etc), a few times, maybe to show that we have a history of being a strong team with good players

Yes they kept saying Dovro Dovro Beiramvand!
And also they were so focused on Azmoun of course because of his popularity in Europe and being a teammate of Jokovic.