{"id":46080,"date":"2022-06-20T07:49:21","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T14:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=46080"},"modified":"2022-06-20T07:49:21","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T14:49:21","slug":"five-months-before-the-world-cup-is-it-game-over-for-dragan-skocic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2022\/06\/20\/five-months-before-the-world-cup-is-it-game-over-for-dragan-skocic\/","title":{"rendered":"Five months before the World Cup, is it game over for Dragan Sko\u010di\u0107?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Iranwire.com – TEHRAN, Dragan Sko\u010di\u0107, the manager of Iran\u2019s national football team, and\u00a0Mirshad Majedi, acting president of the Iranian Football Federation, reportedly had a shouting match last week that lasted for more than 90 minutes. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mere months before Team Melli is due to compete in Group B at the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar, consultations are taking place at President Raisi\u2019s office on possibly sacking Sko\u010di\u0107 and inviting back the former head coach\u00a0Carlos Queiroz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sko\u010di\u0107 was drafted in in January 2020, after the disastrous\u00a0Marc Wilmots\u00a0period. At the time, ex-national team star Ali Daei was expected to take on the role. He later\u00a0claimed\u00a0in an interview with ISNA that the Sports Ministry\u2019s security department had ruled him out, adding that an \u201cAghazadeh\u201d \u2013 a \u201cprinceling\u201d or child of the elite \u2013 had demanded Sko\u010di\u0107 be chosen. Sko\u010di\u0107 was by then already manager of Abadan\u2019s Sanat Naft FC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hours after those revelations, Mehr News Agency confirmed the decision had been taken in a meeting at a private residence in northern Tehran. Among those present were Reza Faizbakhsh, Sko\u010di\u0107\u2019 programming manager, Mahmoud Babaei, a former advisor to Esteghlal FC, and Ali Taj, the editor-in-chief of a sports website and son of Mehdi Taj, former president of the Iranian Football Federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The manner in which Sko\u010di\u0107 was elected shocked even members of the National Football Team. \u201cWe were unhappy under the sun, so we deserve the night,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0Sardar Azmoun, a striker for the team, on his Instagram page, referring to past criticism of Carlos Queiroz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sko\u010di\u0107 has had a chequered history as a manager, formerly overseeing Al Arabi in Kuwait, which enjoyed some success during his tenure, and Al Nasser FC in Saudi Arabia, which did less well. He lost the latter job after the team lost 1-4 to Isfahan Zob Ahan in the 2010 AFC Champions League. He then returned to Croatia to manage his home club, Rijeka, but struggled to turn the team around and was replaced after just 43 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this trial, Sko\u010di\u0107 returned to the Middle East to manage Iran\u2019s Malavan football club. He led the club to the seventh place in the Pro League, their best finish since 2005, and then in 2014 was made head of Khuzestan\u2019s Foolad FC. That club fell down the Pro League table and he lost the job, but returned to Iran in January 2018 to manage Babol\u2019s Khooneh-be-Khooneh FC. In his five games as the head coach, the team won a very respectable 13 point. Following a brief six-month spell at Sanat Naft in Abadan, he was gifted the new position with Team Melli.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dragan Sko\u010di\u0107\u2019s Supporters and Critics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national football team under Sko\u010di\u0107 has broken an in-house record, winning ten matches in a row. The team qualified for the FIFA World Cup faster than it ever had before, eventually winning 15 of the 18 official and friendly games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sko\u010di\u0107\u2019s first defeat came when Iran lost to South Korea in Seoul in March. Then a week ago, the team lost to Algeria in a friendly. Despite the overall triumph, a number of the players are against Sko\u010di\u0107  remaining in post until the end of this year\u2019s contest; after the Algeria match, Alireza Beiranvand, Sardar Azmoun, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Omid Ebrahimi, Mehdi Taremi and Ehsan Hajsafi met with Sports Minister Hamid Sajjadi, who is reportedly lobbying for the return of Carlos Queiroz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others including\u00a0Afshin Ghotbi, a former manager of both the national team and Persepolis FC, support Sko\u010di\u0107. The advice he had to offer him, he said in a recent interview, was \u201cKeep a thick skin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alleged shouting match between Sko\u010di\u0107 and Majedi was reported by Tabnak News Agency. Majedi recently replaced Shahaboddin Azizi Khadem as head of the Federation and, according to Tabnak, Sko\u010di\u0107 had gone to the federation ask Majedi about outstanding sums of money owed to him. Majedi reportedly told Sko\u010di\u0107 that he did had not expected criticism by members of the team themselves, and Sko\u010di\u0107 had shouted back that he had expected to be paid on time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iranwire.com – TEHRAN, Dragan Sko\u010di\u0107, the manager of Iran\u2019s national football team, and\u00a0Mirshad Majedi, acting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":46081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92,91,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c20-other-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":2833,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46080","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\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46082,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46080\/revisions\/46082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}