According to Mehr’s reporter, Iran’s national football team will face the Hong Kong national team in its second match in the 2023 Asian Cup on Friday evening, January 29, at the Khalifa International Stadium. In its first match, Iran faced Palestine and managed to defeat its opponent with a score of 4-1. A victory in this match will confirm Iran’s promotion to the next stage, and if Hong Kong fails to get a point from this match. He will say goodbye to the country of Qatar soon.
Football expert Rahman Ahmadi said in an interview with Mehr reporter about the performance of the national team in recent matches: The national team has performed well in the games it has played and managed to leave the field victorious in most of them, which can increase the morale of the players. In the first match against Palestine, we made some mistakes, which were completely normal, but we should not make these mistakes again in the upcoming matches; In general, we had good conditions and I think the quality of the national team’s game will improve as we move forward. Of course, we gave opportunities to Palestine in some minutes, which the technical staff of the national team will definitely analyze the weaknesses.
We conceded a goal on a personal mistake against Palestine
He continued: “Each game has its own conditions and the players must be aware of this, both in the defense and in the attack, we must be consistent and make less individual mistakes. The goal that Palestine was able to score against Iran was due to the individual mistakes of the team players. It was us, and if we played with a little concentration, we could even score more goals. The goal we scored in the first minute of the game could reduce the motivation of the Palestinian players to get the result.
The former goalkeeper of the national team added: “All the teams entered the tournament with a plan and it cannot be considered an easy match.” As Vietnam managed to score two very good and beautiful goals in Japan’s goal, in the game against Hong Kong, we should not consider ourselves the winner in advance and we should have a plan for every minute of the game. One thing that can be mentioned about the first round of the tournament is that most of the contending teams could not start their first game perfectly and all the teams had flaws.
We have an opportunity to rejuvenate the national team
Regarding the high average age of the national team, Ahmadi pointed out: We should now focus on the matches of the Nations Cup and not go to the sidelines. After the Nations Cup, we have a good opportunity to hold the World Cup competitions and little by little, young players can be used in friendly matches to change the generation. Considering that good coaches make up the technical staff of the national team, so we can send a young and good team to the competitions until the 2026 World Cup so that we don’t have any problems in this regard.
In the end, he said: The physical fitness of the players is important, and their age should not be taken into account. A player who can play until the age of 36 and has a very good performance, why not be invited to the national team? In most cases, older players are more physically fit than young players, which is also the case in the Iranian national team.