Taking the back way to Europe

Today, there are players from 60 different nationalities playing in the English Premier League and, although we are constantly being ranked amongst FIFA’s top 20 nations, none of these 60 nationalities spells Iran. Sadly the only one representing Iranian football in the top three leagues in the world (Spain, Italy and England) is Messina’s Rahman Rezaie.

The day Eto’o came to town
Last summer, when I was visiting my parents in Malmo, Sweden, I opened up my morning newspaper and read that Eto’o was in town for trials with Swedish powerhouse Malmo FF. The Eto’o in question was not Samuel but his younger brother David. Along with Eto’o, another African, Nigerian U-19 striker, Edvard Ofere had also been invited for trials. I decided to head down to the training ground and check Eto’o out. There, I meet some of Malmo’s ex players that I knew and two player agents. I have always been fascinated with the player transfer business and I stroked up a conversation with these agents. To my amazement, Malmo FF had, in the days leading up to the transfer deadline, been offered about 100 players from various agents and sports management companies. 100 players. Of those, Malmo had picked Eto’o and Ofere for trials. Obviously, my next question to one of the club officials that I knew was; If any of the players offered where Iranian? He looked at me as if I had two heads and said “no, but, there were players from Morocco, Kenya, Paraguay, Rwanda, Thailand, Brazil, Iceland, Zimbabwe and some 15 other nationalities that were being offered.”

Why Edvard!
That made me thinking, why not any Iranians? If a player from the Nigerian U-19 team is here now and players from countries with lesser pedigree than ours are being offered to European clubs, why not someone from Iran? Sure Malmo is no Barcelona but it could be a perfect place for a young and talented Iranian U-19 or U-23 international to start, right? I went on to ask the agents, one Swedish and one African, I asked them what they knew about Iranian football and players, the African hardly knew where Iran was and the Swede could only name Daei and Mahdavikia. So what is the point of my story? What stops Iran from exporting more players to Europe? Have our players been represented well enough? Are our players willing to start their careers in some lower European leagues in Scandinavia or even Eastern Europe and fight them selves up the food chain?

Humble beginnings
African players, like the ones from the Ivory coast, Nigeria and Mali don’t travel to Europe for the sight seeing, they are there so that they can survive, they are there because they have to feed up to forty people back home. Samuel Eto’o summed it up when he said that he has to “run like black man so that he can live like a white man”. “If you dream of one day playing in France, start in the second division, or the weaker Belgian league and work your self up. Dream of playing in the English Premier League but cant get a contract, try Scotland. You can either wait for a Spanish La liga side to approach you or start in the second division.” (This is one agent’s sells pitch to his young players) The climate of these lower league clubs are harsh, some players make it, some disappear but some realize their dreams. It is important to remember that some of the biggest African (and even South American) stars started their careers in modest European clubs.

Food for thought
Much of Ivory Coasts recent success spells, Beveren, a Belgian first division club that has connections with Ivorian Académie ASEC. Many of Ivory Coast national team players started their European career at Beveren and after an “easy” introduction to European football most of them have gone on to bigger and better things in Holland, France, Germany etc. Now, not every nation has the luxury of mass transferring their talents to a predestined European club but this could be food for thought for some of our players.

Missed opportunities?
I don’t wish to criticize our players but are they willing to start at the bottom? Speaking of Ofere in Malmo, why shouldn’t Oladi have gone there and launch his European career? Surely, players like Iman Mobali, Mojtabba Jabbari, Adranik Teymourian, Pejman Monezari and others have got the capability to play in France. Portugal, Holland etc. I am sure we all agree but sometimes, our players need to take the backdoor to Europe. I don’t claim to have all the answers or any for that matter but I wonder if the names of, hard working and talented Iranian youngsters, is being thrown in to the massive global hat of international player transfers? The ones that do though, need to grab that opportunity with both hands. Take Pas defender Nosrati for example, Croatian top club Dynamo Zagreb officially expressed their interest in him but the player seemed coy on moving to Zagreb because “he preferred a better European club”. Nosrati is free to choose his own future but surely, for a player, who has lost his spot in the national team and has been struggling lately, moving to a top Croatian club would have been the perfect thing to do. Well there, he could have developed, and if his performance had been good enough, it could have been a springboard to a better league.

Our football cannot reach the heights that we expect from it without having a bulk of our players playing in European leagues. We have to some extent already concurred the Bundesliga and there is no reason why more of our players cannot play in France, Holland, Portugal and even Spain and England, how we get there is another question.

I would like to leave you with a quote from Tariq Al Hayder, Soccernet’s Saudi Arabian World Cup correspondent;

“Anyone who watches Saudi Arabia square off against European opposition should notice the fear with which the Saudis play. Against Portugal last Wednesday, every player was awe-struck and quaking before kick-off. The thing is... it's ok to lose. I just wish Saudi Arabia would lose in style. I wish everybody would realize that someone like Cristiano Ronaldo, sublimely talented as he may be, is only a 20-year-old kid. He is not a red devil. Even if he is European.”