Masoud Iqbali said in an interview with Mehr reporter about the Iran national team’s match against Jordan: We witnessed a disappointing game from the national team players. We have weaknesses in all areas, and if the players of the Jordanian national team had used their positions well, we might have lost this match.
He continued: “The conditions of the national team with this style of play are not satisfactory at all, and although most of these players have played together in recent years and have participated in the World Cup, they are very unplanned and unmotivated.” One of the reasons could be that the players already knew they were winners, but I think that this team should be motivated.
Stating that the national team needs a psychologist, Iqbali clarified: the players do not have enough motivation to attend the events and they should be psychologically worked on so that we do not have more problems in the Asian Nations Cup.
The Iranian football expert added: One of the main problems of the national team is the lack of young players in the team. Most of the players of the national team are getting old and this shows the unplannedness of the Iranian team. Qale Nooyi should reconsider the list of players invited to the national team camp, because if this trend continues, Iran’s national team will definitely not have energetic players for the upcoming World Cup and will become a home for old men.
The teacher of the Asian Football Confederation pointed out: Iran’s team has a lot of weaknesses in the defensive line compared to other lines, while we saw during the time of Ki-Rosh that Iran was one of the teams that made a lot of mistakes in defense. Instead of progressing, Qala Nooyi’s team has regressed and this is not promising.
Iqbali said about the next meeting of the Iranian national team against Qatar in the final of the four-way tournament in Jordan: I do not have a good knowledge of the Qatar national team under the leadership of Ki Rosh. They have shown that they are far away from the first-level teams in Asia and in their first match against Iraq, they managed to beat them in penalty kicks. The match with these teams cannot test the players of the national team, we must definitely face teams that will challenge us, not that it does not have any positive points for us.
The football expert of our country explained regarding the matches of Iran’s opponents including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Saudi Arabia in Fifadi in comparison to the national team matches: Teams like Japan that have reached a level of strength that they can easily face the best in the world and with They leave the field with a decisive advantage, they are certainly thinking about success in the 2026 World Cup. If the same teams from Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. enter the Nations Cup with their main players, it is unlikely that we will get results and we will experience bad defeats.
He continued: New Castle is a coach who does not like to lose, and the teams with whom we hold preparatory games are proof of this. The driving force of every team is its young players, Iran does not have such people in its composition. We have a high average age in the national team, and if we factor in the Asian Nations Cup, we should seriously think about the World Cup.
In the end, Iqbali stated: The national team is in dire need of skinning, and the way players are arranged and used should be reconsidered. We were not good at all against Jordan, and the players who were in defense performed very poorly and were full of mistakes, so I hope we will not see such games from the national team in future matches.