ISP Editorial: The Incredible 398ers

Iran youth team started off their journey by winning AFC U-16 Championship last year to qualify to 2009 U-17 World Cup Finals in Nigeria, winning the challenging Group C teams at U-17 World Cup Finals and proceeding to knock-out stage for the first time in Iran youth team’s history to record an incredible 398 minutes without conceding a goal at the competition until Uruguay’s first goal; An unbeaten streak that no other youth team at 13th edition of FIFA U-17 World Cup Finals have managed to match so far.

The story of Iranian incredibles was first unveiled at Asian U-16 Championship where Iran comfortably won their group ahead of Bahrain, Singapore and hosts Uzbekistan to storm into the quarter-finals, where they overcame Syria 2-0. They went on to defeat UAE 3-0 in the semi-final before defeating Korea Republic 2-1 to to be crowned Asian U-16 champions. At those continental finals, their rearguard was just as ferocious as now, with the youngsters conceding just three goals in their six games.


Ali Doustimehr’s squad selection consist of highly talented players playing cohesively with superb communication with each other.  Among those were starlets such as the striker, Kaveh Rezaei, the biggest revelation at Asian U-16 Championship for scoring six goals to earn the tournament's golden shoe Award; Add to that, Iran’s solid goalkeeper, Iman Sadeghi and rock-solid defenders such as Bahram Maleki, Ali Goodarzi and Iman shirazi who were the backbone of Iran U-17’s successful defensive strategy at World Cup Finals.

Yet despite their outstanding games at World Cup U-17 by defeating Gambia and European heavyweights, Netherland, and holding Colombia in stalemate, all Iran youth team squad players were overlooked by Afshin Ghotbi in his latest squad list for Asian Cup qualifiers. Ironically, Afshin Ghotbi justifies his selection such as that of 32 years old Esteghlal striker, Farhad Majidi's, and out of form defenders, Hadi Aghili and Hashem Beikzadeh's call-ups, by citing “we just don’t have international players in some positions.”! Its indeed paradoxical that Iran youth team’s sensational strikers such as Kaveh Rezaei, Payam Sadeghian and Milad Gharibi who all managed to score against international teams like Netherland, Colombia and Gambia in World Cup Finals and previously against Asian opponents, are all overlooked for the likes of Mojtaba Rezaei who has only scored 2 goals in 16 IPL appearances, or aging Farhad Majidi who has only scored 2 goals in 14 appearances.

One wonders based on which criteria, Iran National team coach preferred some aging and ordinary league players over clinical, talented, yet experienced young players who have relentlessly proven themselves at international stage. One of the positive outcomes of Iran U-17’s great World Cup appearance though was that Ali Doustimehr proved pundits, Iranian coaches and officials that there are still many talented Iranian youth players out there whom just need to be given a chance, get directed and molded to form a cohesive team.

Sadly though apart from Doustimehr, most other Iranian coaches resist against rejuvenating their teams with young starlets; and seems like Iran National team coach again chose to follow the same old failing path ahead of Iran’s Asian Cup qualification games.