Daneil Davari’s debut for Team Melli is in doubt after the German newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung has reported that the German-Polish-Iranian goalkeeper is declining the invitation for the Lebanon game to be held on February 6th citing an important match that his club Eintracht Braunschweig is scheduled to play 48 hours after that AFC Asian Cup 2015 qualifier in Tehran.
On Friday 8th February , Eintracht Braunschweig who are now second in the Bundesliga II table is schedule to play VfR Aalen. From the onset of the invitation of Davari for the Lebanon game, doubts have been raised that the 25-year-old goalkeeper will follows the example of teammate Domi Kumbela and decline an invitation to the national team of Canada in order to concentrate fully on the promotion battle with the blue and yellow team.
Iran’s Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz has invited the Brunswick goalkeeper, whose father is from Iran, for the next qualification game for the Asian Cup 2015 against Lebanon. This was confirmed by Christoph Leutrum, who is Davari’s business manager and advisor. Davari’s invitation was already widely reported in Tehran’s media and on the web.
“The contact with the Iranian Association has been going on since last summer,” says Leutrum. “They want to have Daniel and he was quite happy.” Davari would have been following the footsteps of Ashkan Dejagah (Fulham / England), Omid Nazari (Ängelholms FF / Sweden) and Reza Ghochannejad (Standard Liege / Belgium), as the fourth European Legionnaires in the Iranian squad.
That the native of Giessen was nominated for the first time this week, probably was the consequence of the fact that Iran’s current number 1 goalkeeper, Mehdi Rahmati, had announced his retirement from the national team, claiming “personal reasons”. However, many insiders have doubted his reasoning and considered the 29-year goalkeeper as a pre-emptive step before the coaching staff benching him or even ousting the long serving Esteghlal keeper. After several blunders, the 75 times capped keeper had come under wide criticism especially for his poor timing and mishandling of crosses.
In another development, Omid Namazi , one of Carlos Queiroz assistants, was quoted today by ISNA, that he is not aware of Davari’s declining to join the squad nor was he informed verbally or officially by anyone in the squad or IFF.