{"id":18589,"date":"2014-06-20T06:15:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T13:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=18589"},"modified":"2014-06-20T06:18:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T13:18:28","slug":"disciplined-iran-hopeful-to-hold-back-messi-co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/06\/20\/disciplined-iran-hopeful-to-hold-back-messi-co\/","title":{"rendered":"Disciplined Iran hopeful to hold back Messi & Co."},"content":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – BELO HORIZONTE, Team Melli has shown a stellar defensive performance in the goalless draw versus Nigeria, but will have to further improve the defensive and offensive performance to stand a chance against a star-studded Argentina on Saturday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Argentinians had much more problems versus an ambitious Bosnian side than expected and will now return to their usual 4-3-3 formation with Messi, Higuain and Aguero in attack, being supported by Di Maria, Gago and Mascherano, as coach Sabella already announced.<\/p>\n

Iran boss Carlos Queiroz as usual was not similarly vocal about his lineup plans, but it would be a major surprise if the Portuguese would not field the same 11 he had already used versus Nigeria and in the dress rehearsal against Trinidad and Tobago.<\/p>\n

Queiroz might be tempted to bring on Ghasem Hadadifar as additional central midfielder instead of Ehsan Hajsafi or Khosro Heydari and move Ashkan Dejagah from the supporting striker into a side midfielder role though. That would mean Iran’s 4-4-1-1 would be transformed into a 4-5-1 to pack the midfield against Argentina’s world class players.<\/p>\n

However, it is also expected that Argentina will give Iran much more space on the counter than a cautious Nigerian team had done on Monday, so it cannot be completely ruled out Queiroz bringing on Masoud Shojaei or Alireza Jahanbakhsh to benefit from that circumstance.<\/p>\n

Although anything but an Argentinian victory would be a major surprise, the defensively very well organized Iranians being thrashed is at least as unlikely as Team Melli getting points from this match – although if Messi & Co. get going any team in the world could suffer a thrashing on a bad day.<\/p>\n

Iran, who will play in the red away jerseys, indeed might have little to lose. Regardless of the result versus Argentina, Iran will most likely have their final against Bosnia & Herzegovina next Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Bosnians will take on Nigeria in the other group match six hours after the Iranian game.<\/p>\n

Argentina – Iran<\/strong>
\nWorld Cup 2014, Group F, Belo Horizonte<\/p>\n

Possible lineups:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Argentina:<\/strong> Romero – Zabaleta, Garay, Fernandez, Rojo – Mascherano, Gago, Di Maria – Messi, Higuain, Aguero<\/p>\n

Iran:<\/strong> Haghighi – Montazeri, Hosseini, Sadeghi, Pouladi – Heydari, Teymourian, Nekounam, Hajsafi – Dejagah – Ghoochannejhad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – BELO HORIZONTE, Team Melli has shown a stellar defensive performance in the goalless…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":18557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":4806,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}