They don’t really care about us

IranSportsPress.com: It is fair to call it a national epidemic of incompetency. Iran football management as a whole reflects the poor management at the top level that has gripped the suffering nation for decades.

As chaotic as every day goes in Iran, this past month has been extremely turbulent for the Iranian football.

In span of one month, Iranian football federation’s incompetency- intentionally or not is up for debate- lead to both Iranian men and women Olympic teams to be eliminated in their respective qualifying matches.

In women’s case, it was a Hijab dispute with FIFA. Both sides had previously agreed to a dress code, but for some reason Iranian football officials decided to reverse back to an illegal previous format. Despite the team’s strong chance of qualifying to 2012 Olympic games- the first in their history- thanks to their own football officials’ ignorance to obey FIFA rules, Iranian women footballers were disqualified; A bitter news that shattered the hopes of Iran’s finest generation. Instead of being held accountable for ignoring FIFA’s earlier warnings and letters in the past months, Iran football officials not only didn’t take any responsibility for their wrongdoing, they even defiantly said “Iran women team’s current kit will not be modified.” In other words suggesting that they don’t care if Iran women football team is suspended by FIFA again.

As if that didn’t cause enough heartache for the football-crazy nation, specially its rising generation of women footballers, Iran football officials made another blunder few days later; this time involving Iran men Olympic team. In the first leg of the qualifying game against Iraq – which Iran won 0-1 - Iran fielded the suspended Kamran Kamyabinia; A player who was booked twice in two legs against Kyrgyzstan in the previous round.

What makes this even worse is that the player in question had notified team officials about his suspension before the game, only to be ignored by team managers. As it turns out, prior to kick off in the second leg, unconfirmed rumor spread in the dressing room that Iran’s 1-0 away win had changed to 3-0 loss to Iraq because of that error. A shock news that sucked all the energy, and motivation out of the young Iranian players, causing them to produce a robotic performance on the pitch, losing 2-0 at home.

Not that the return-leg loss is justifiable by Iran’s newly appointed coach, but one wonders how team officials missed the fact that Kamyabinia was ineligible for this game. Even worse, Iran’s incompetent supervisors chose to ignore the suspended player’s honest precaution, to even double check this matter with the Asian Football Federation. A simple avoidable mistake, that caused elimination of Iran Olympic football team for another 4 years.

Not that it matters now if three of the responsible officials were sacked after this blunder. The truth is, such costly mistakes by Iran’s inept football managers have happened too many times in the past.

For years Iran’s football youngsters, boys and girls, known as the third generation of revolution, have failed to make a presence at the Olympic stage because their very own older countrymen, football officials and managers, have ignored them and their passion. This episode shows Iranian football officials are so ignorant and incompetent to even bother reading the AFC and FIFA disciplinary list ahead of matches, and to take note of letters sent to them prior to matches.

For Iran officials, Iranian girls, who are even deprived of their basic right to enter their own country’s arenas, have no necessity to be a professional athlete nor take part in the Olympic games. For them, it just is not important if their young women footballers are suspended by FIFA because of their own non-compliance. For them defiance is the solution, not compliance even at the cost of Iranian women embarrassment. It does not even matter if the Iranian women ever be allowed to ply their trade at international tournaments. For them, it is also ok if the men team fails yet again to break the run which goes to three decades. Their incompetency has disappointed young and ambitious youngsters over and over for years, why break the ‘norm’? They fail a nation because they are incompetent to manage simple tasks. They dash hopes of young generation because they don’t care about them. They resist to step aside, because their power and title is all that matters to them. Until next round of football failure, our young footballers have all the right to shout “All I wanna say is that they don’t really care about us”.