According to Mehr’s reporter, Legionnaire players are one of the most important elements in Iran’s national football team, and the fans and the team’s technical staff have opened a special account on them to win the championship in the Asian Nations Cup. There are 14 legionnaires in Iran’s national team: Ehsan Haj Safi, Milad Mohammadi, Sidmjid Hosseini, Sadeq Moharami, Omid Ebrahimi, Saeed Ezatollahi, Saman Qudous, Mohammad Mohebi, Mehdi Qaidi, Mehdi Tarimi, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Sardar Azmoun, Ali Qolizadeh and Karim Ansarifard. who are present in European and Asian teams.
12 players in Iran’s national football team have been selected from domestic leagues. The interesting thing to note here is that among these 12 players, 10 players have experience in foreign leagues and only Seyed Hossein Hossein and Aria Yousefi have not played outside the Iranian league.
Among the 24 teams that are present in the Asian Nations Cup, there are teams that do not have legionnaires in their composition, and all the players who have been invited to the national team have been selected from domestic leagues. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, UAE and Vietnam are the five teams that rely on domestic players.
Of course, this issue is acceptable for the three countries of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because these countries have spent a lot of money in recent years for the entry of prominent foreign players into their domestic leagues. One of the goals of this work has been to strengthen the domestic league and thus to strengthen national football. Now we have to see what results these three countries will achieve in the upcoming Nations Cup and whether they can get the fruits of this work or they should wait until they reach their desired results in the long run.
The Asian Nations Cup will be held from 22 January to 21 February, with the participation of 24 teams hosted by Qatar, and the Iranian national football team is in the same group as the UAE, Hong Kong and Palestine teams.
The national team schedule is as follows:
* Iran – Palestine (December 24 – 21:00 – Education City Stadium)
* Iran – Hong Kong (January 29 – 21:00 – Khalifa Stadium)
* Iran – UAE (February 3 – 6:30 p.m. – Education City Stadium)