With one crucial step to take for the qualification to the FIFA World Cup 2018 Russia, Carlos Queiroz and the FFIRI are leaving nothing to chance.

Team Melli is setting camp in Austria followed by another camp in Dubai before returning to Tehran for the match against Uzbekistan. A victory against the Uzbeks will mean an early qualification to the World Cup regardless to the results of others. Team Melli is leading the group with a 4 points margin with Korea second and Uzbekistan on third.

The training camp will start on the 26th of May when the squad flies to Vienna. At the end of the camp, the squad will travel to Podgorica in Montenegro to face the host nation in a friendly international in Podgorica City Stadium on the 4th June 2017. A day after that match , the squad will head to Dubai, UAE to set up another camp. Team Melli will return back to Tehran to face Uzbekistan on 12th June who will be fighting hard for a result as they still a good chance for one of the qualification places.

With the Persian Gulf season over and the Asian Champions League group stage just about to end, Queiroz will have no problems getting his local players contingent for the training camps. The legionnaires will be an issue as usual. It is expected that some players from European league and Qatar may be released earlier    

Iran defeated Mexico 3-2 in the first game of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Bahamas 2017.

Iran goalkeeper Peyman Hosseini scored the first goal of the tournament and made a crucial save at the end of the match to give the Asian champions all three points in the Group B opening match in Nassau on 27 April 2017.  Akbari and Ahmadzadeh scored the other two goal for Iran.

On Saturday, Team Melli Beach Soccer will meet the Italian national team for a top of the table clash. Italy won its first match against Nigeria in a high scoring 12-6 game.

Team Melli's last game will be on May 1st against Nigeria.

A top soccer player who once played on the Iranian women’s national team says she has been barred from ever returning to the squad or from landing a job as a coach after government officials found out she played in an exhibition game while not wearing a hijab — during a trip outside the country — and played alongside male players. In an interview with Masih Alinejad of the My Stealthy Freedom Facebook page, longtime player Shiva Amini said she was visiting Switzerland and Italy and “playing in friendly games” when the offense occurred. An innocuous photo snapped in Zurich that she posted on Instagram showed her heading a soccer ball and in the image, no veil was covering her hair and she was wearing shorts, another offense in the eyes of officials at the Iranian Futsal Federation, which oversees the women’s team. She’s been banned from playing or coaching in Iran’s domestic league.

They “were not even official games where I had to represent the Islamic Republic,” Amini told Alinejad. “However, it seems that those games drew the ire of the officials within the Islamic Republic for two reasons. First of all, I happened to be unveiled and was wearing shorts. Secondly, I was playing with boys in a team. The officials of the Iranian Futsal Federation told me, “When you are a member of an official team, you do not have the right to play without the veil even in non-official games abroad. We are living in Islamic country. Why did you have to play with boys? You would have been disqualified from the team even if you had played with boys wearing a veil in Iran as well.” Amini has devoted the last 13 years of life to her soccer career, four years of which she was a member of the national women’s team.

The disciplinary record of Iran both on and off the field is raising alarm in the final stages of qualification for the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. Iran has a golden opportunity to make it to the finals back to back for the first time in its history. Team Melli  is comfortably leading the group with 17 points , 4 clear points ahead of second placed rival South Korea. Each team has 3 games to go.

However, some serious breaches could risk this historical achievement. Team Melli has one of the highest numbers of yellow cards amongst the 12 teams in the final round (Round 3) of the Asian Zone qualifiers. But it is off the field that the real danger looms. Crowd disturbance and misbehavior, albeit on small scale,  has not only damaged the coffers of the Iranian football federation to amount of  138,000 Swiss francs already, the continuation of such disorder might lead to much serious disciplinary actions such as points deduction or banning home games being played in Tehran.

The fracas and ill disciplinary in Team Melli actually started from one Javad Nekounam who was at the time, the assistant coach. It was against Qatar in the first match of the 3^rd round. It cost Iran several bans including Nekounam himself and a 40,000 Swiss francs fine.

There was many other fines and threats by FIFA after that match but the most serious was in the last game against China in Azadi Stadium , when a fire cracker thrown at the linesman , nearly reached at a stage where the match would have been abandoned by the referee. Luckily , the shocked linesman continued the match and was not physically hurt.

FFIRI should consider itself lucky that FIFA only slammed a 50.000 Swiss Francs fine because of unsportsmanlike and dangerous conduct by the fans during the game, and did not take more serious action.

Azadi Stadium is fully government own stadia and is policed by the government security forces who seem to body check every fan entering the 100,000 capacity showpiece of Iranian football. However, throwing fireworks, objects and large stones at opposing teams in Iran and particularly Azadi Stadium, is quite common and continues despite the supposedly strict security checks!.

Despite decades of crowd ill-disciplined and treacherous acts, the Security forces in and out of the stadium have not been able to prevent it happening over and over again. It is has been known that security guards confiscate fan’s cameras yet lit in fireworks and pyrotechnics by others!!!

For its incompetence, this security force unit gets a lot of propaganda and praise particularly  from TV match commentators who always seem to praise the security. It certainly seems like it is a choreographed act and the commentators are forced to mention it.  in reality, there is quite a bit of incompetence and failures by the all concerned and especially the security forces which might end up dearly for Iranian football.

Team Melli's excellent result against Qatar and China lifted them up to # 28 in the world steadfastly maintaining the top of the Asian Ranking.   In the latest stats published today by FIFA, Iran with 820 points is on place above Bosnia & Herzegovina (815) and one place below Republic of Ireland (823). significantly , some household names in World football are now ranked below Iran such as Netherlands and Sweden In Asia, Team Melli remains undisputed king of Asian Football ranking.  

FIFA World Ranking

April 2017

	Rank	Team	Points	Previous	Change
	26	Northern Ireland	823(823.23)	786	9
	26	Republic of Ireland	823(822.62)	860	-2
	28	Iran	820(820.12)	794	5
	29	Bosnia and Herzegovina	815(814.85)	826	0
	30	Senegal	805(805.01)	831	-2
	31	Hungary	801(801.33)	834	-4
	32	Netherlands	792(791.85)	900	-11
	33	Cameroon	779(778.99)	795	-1
	34	Sweden	768(768.13)	682	11
	35	Burkina Faso	765(765.39)	778	1

   

FIFA Rank April 2017

AFC

Asia Rank	World Rank	Team	Total Points	Previous Points	+/-Posn
1	28	Iran	820	794	5
2	43	Korea Rep	700	691	-3
3	44	Japan	685	631	7
4	50	Australia	661	622	5
5	52	Saudi Arabia	646	610	5
6	60	Uzbekistan	586	561	3
7	74	U.A.E	453	521	-6
8	80	Syria	426	355	15
9	81	China PR	425	407	5
10	89	Qatar	369	415	-5
11	101	India	331	233	31

 

Iran historic ranking data

	Rank	Date	Month	MP	W	L	D	Best Ranking	Worst Ranking	Best move	Worst move
	28	2017	April	3	2	1	0	-	-	-	-
	33	2017	March	0	0	0	0	-	-	-	-
	32	2017	February	0	0	0	0	-	-	-	-
	29	2017	January	0	0	0	0	-	-	-	-
	29	2016	-	10	8	0	2	27	44	+10 (October)	-3 (November)
	45	2015	-	14	9	1	4	38	51	+10 (February)	-4 (November)
	51	2014	-	10	3	3	4	34	56	+5 (April)	-7 (October)
	33	2013	-	9	7	1	1	33	67	+15 (July)	-10 (June)

The Iranian football federation has requested a friendly international match against Oman in May 2017. Team Melli is one win away from the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. The match against Uzbekistan in Azadi Stadium will be a decider and the countdown for qualification. Three match points against the tough Uzbek , who themselves  have a chance of qualifying , will take Iran directly to the World Cup. The victory will raise the points tally of Team Melli to 20, leaving the third place Uzbekistan 8 points behind with two matches left. That is an unassailable lead for Team Melli regardless to the result of the last two matches.  In case of a draw against Uzbekistan , Team Melli will still need one point from the two remaining matches against Korea (away) and Syria (home) to qualify. FFIRI proposes 24th or 26th of May for the match. Oman football federation has not responded yet.