Editorial: I don't want to write about Iranian football anymore

I would love to write every day of my life about Iranian football. I would love to write about the new training plans of our national team, the achievements of our clubs, our players shining bright in Europe, the intensity and quality of our league, the exceptional process of our football association trying to find a coach, yet, really, there's nothing to write.

At national team level, well don't get me started on this. Our national team is for around 7 months or 5 years, at least it feels like 5 years, looking for a new head of FA and a new coach. Now apparently we have finally found a head of FA, or maybe we haven't, I really stopped bothering. Now the farce of finding a coach might come to an end too. Maybe, once we have a coach, we might as well play a friendly at some time and the game will be even shown on TV. Maybe not. Overall, it's just sad. Look at Iraq. After Jorvan Viera departed, it took them around 2 days to find a new coach, and they got a master of tactics in Egil Olsen. And this is Iraq, a country with a civil war going on more or less.

I would love to write about Perspolis, I would love to write about Afshin the Emperor and how he is the best thing in years that has happened to our football. In fact, I even had an article ready but somehow I never put it on the front page, because from the moment I wrote the first line of it, it all went downhill. Right now, Ghotbi has become the lame duck of Perspolis with club management and certain groups and certain people deciding over his head and killing his authority. So his Persian is all of a sudden not good enough to give interviews? Well, even if, he has more to say about football than any other Iranian.
The one man who brought Perspolis on top of the table and for the first time in reach of winning the title after all these years, who brought back the old attacking Perspolis of the 70's and 80ies most of us knew from story books, is being destroyed and brought down. Oh, I'm sorry, it wasn't Ghotbi's work, it was all Estili.

I would love to write about Iman Mobali, my personal favourite player, the rising star of European football, or Andranik Teymourian, but I frankly haven't seen them anywhere doing anything. Mobali hurts me most. I personally think that with the right coach and right chance and right league, he could have become a true gem in football, but at 26, it might just be too late.
With all honesty, I can't write anything positive or anything at all about Iranian football. I would either cry and destroy my laptop or I would be afterward too depressed and stay at home all night listening to Radiohead, Muse or some other "weirdo" music. I really don't feel like it though.

I will write about what I feel and what I love to write and think about. I will write about the greatest team of the past 20-25 years, AC Milan.
You see, I never actually really liked Milan, I'm not a fan of them. In fact, I have more sympathy for their city neighbours in black and blue and I believe their owner is one of the most evil people in the world. However, let's put it like this: In my humble opinion every progressive, good and advanced idea that happened to world football in the past 25 years, is down to Milan and the man behind it, Arrigo Sacchi. An advanced scientific approach to football? Well, Dynamo Kiev and in some parts Ajax did it before, but what Milan have with the Milanello sports centre and the Milan Lab is state of the art and was in 1987 10 years ahead of anyone else.

Rotation? Milan started buying under Capello almost every player in the world they needed and built a huge squad, that could play in 5 tournaments and not lose one game. That's why as an example they went unbeaten for a whole year between 93 and 94 and also beat Barca in the Champions League final with 4-0, despite having their first team defense out.
Attacking football in balance with defense? Before Milan, you had attack or defense, although maybe Ajax came pretty close but Milan played on another level. If you want a proof of it, try to find in Youtube a video of their game in 88 against Real Madrid, where they thrashed them with 5-0, the one Madrid team that won 5 league titles in a row and featured Schuster, Michel, Sanchez and Butrageno. Madrid didn't have ONE chance in that game and barely made it past their half way line. Milan's pressing and defense was just too phenomenal and if it wasn't for Milan, no one would say in football that attack is the best form of defense.
Scouting? Kaka, Pato, Gullit, Van Basten, Rijkaard, Serginho, Leonardo...I believe that in dictionaries next to scouting, there should be written "See Wenger and Milan". Milan is a synonym for perfecting scouting.

I don't want to get too much involved into the whole football philosophy of Milan, why Sacchi was a master and a great teacher too, as you have with Capello, Rijkaard, Ancelotti, Donadoni and Van Basten his pupils and their coaching records or anything else dealing with Milan. I just say again, that no matter how you twist and turn it, no team has been as great and important for football in the past 25 years as Milan has been.
The funny thing is that 25 years ago, Milan were rock bottom, had lots of debt and were far from the club they are today. It took just investment from one rich, lunatic person with intentions for popularity to get them where they are now. On the wave of Milan, Berlusconi rode into politics and became Italy's Prime Minister.

What does all this have to do with Iranian football you may ask? Well, you see, it would just take one person, and I'm sure that there might be one person somewhere, to come up, rescue one of the big clubs, let a coach really work, give him the freedom and everything and some other person to do the same with Iran's FA. They should even just do this to gain popularity and ride on a ticket to become something higher in Iran, it's just that I would really welcome ANYONE with a bit of competence or incompetence, but with ideas, to make something out of the mess we have in our football, so that I may write about something else than the greatness of AC Milan.
He even doesn't need to have much clue about football, Berlusconi has it neither, but he needs to let people work, even if it is for his own selfish interest to become popular. I also realize that football might just be the most irrelevant of our issues, but it's a reflection of society and we need to start somewhere. Just do something, otherwise our football will be of no relevance at all in 3 years to come and we might as well just write about Milan, Barca, Madrid, Inter and ManU.