Come on guys! All the Iranian fans... let's be hopeful of a great match against Portugal:
- Daei is out. I am (was) kinda a Daei fan. But wait! I wished he was much wiser to retire years ago, or at least right after he beat everybody's record of goal-scoring. Now, he is just ruining all the good name and memory the world, and more importantly Iran could have had of him. So, now, he is gonna sit out for the Portugal match, and let's take it as a shock (of those types you get from changing a coach; stupid, but working) in a positive way. In this case, changing the team's captain is not that stupid, just working. Let's hope. We were much better of an attacking team against Japan and Qatar without Daei.
Hopefully Hashemian will be more fit in 5 days we have before the game. And Borhani is just full of energy and motive, as we saw him against Croatia.
- Zandi will be back. He will be a great help. He is not a super-star for us, obviously, but young yet experienced. With him playing at home, we'll have more power in the midfield.
- Navidkia is back too. Probably we won't see him starting on Saturday, but we will have some more good midfielder on the bench if we need them. Let's hope he is fit too.
- Teymourian is our new knight. Just like Zandi, he won't be a star, but was very promising against Mexico. He doesn't much of international experience but showed a lot of energy and courage so far. Go Ando!
- Mahdavikia was ok. We hadn't seen him play for TM for a long time. Personaly, I didn't expect this much from him. Now we can hope for a better fit Mahdavikia as well. With a Mehdi, like we had before, we can do much in the right wing.
- Nekounam was better than our friendly matches. He would be even better against Portugal.
- Karimi is Karimi. We sometimes (or always) expect him to be a real wizard. he simply is not a wizard; he's a great player, but with human limits, guys. He was not as good as before, but still was somehow impressive. He will be much better on Saturday for sure. He is Karimi; it says it all. All he needs is morale.
- Madanchi, Shojaei, Kazemeian, Khatibi all are motives. Our younger/newer talents are just hungry for a chance to prove their abilities --and well, catch European eyes!
- Mirzapour, Rezaei, and other defense line guys now need us supporters to back them not demoralize them. Ok, their mistakes did cost us a game, but now that game is over and we will have two other important games. We need them strong more than before. Be realistic, forget idealism for a minute; Mirzapour is our best goalkeeper we can use in the net at the moment. We should have done many thing before entering the games regarding our defense and goalkeeping positions, but put yourself in any coach's shoes; can you trust a goalie with 1 international cap to protect you against a team like Portugal? What now we got is a Mirzapour guy, whoever he is, as our most capped, experienced goalkeeper. Now we must make him as best as he can be. This best can keep our net closed against Portugal.
- We are Iran! We come back and fight, and make any unbelievable, well, believable. We did it before, so we can do it again. Apparently, we our last result, the Portugese will underestimate us (good for us), and our players would hate that (bad for Portugal). They'll fight to prove everybody what they realy are.
Let's keep our fingers crossed. We have a chance.
Go IRAN! :yohoo: :Iran1:
