Scouring the web looking for interesting articles about the greatest football show on earth, and mainly looking at the World’s prestigious media for reviews on Group ‘F’ which Includes Argentina, Nigeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina in addition to Team Melli, it is surprising how some reporters have superficial and sometime no knowledge of Iran’s football while writing reviewing the prospects of Group ‘F’ teams. Obviously analyzing Argentina is a no brainer. As one of the candidates to lift the FIFA World Cup 2014 and a star-studded team that includes the best player in the world, the exposure and information is so readily available in all forms of media, making the job of analysis that easy.
Information on Bosnia-Herzegovina as a European team with some star players like Edin Dzeko , is also easily available in the press and the web. To lesser extent is Nigeria, although good dossiers of their European based players are available for reviews and analysis and used extensively.
It is not the same with Iran. Much of the analysis is focused around the few European based players particularly Ashkan Dejagah. Alireza Jahanbakhsh is the other player who has received a good, and one must say, deserved exposure lately. Others like Nekounam and Shojae have been mentioned but the information about them refers to their days in Osasuna and somehow ancient. Football team is more just a handful of players, and analysis of a team based on a few of them falls short of being accurate and reliable. Hence, most of the analysis around the web and other media, gives Iran very little chance of success based on their inadequate knowledge of Team Melli. That is ambiguous for the World Cup fans, but perhaps it could work well for the team being the weak outsider. However, it is doubtful that the coaches of Iran’s opponents in Group ‘f’ are as shallow and ill-informed about the capabilities, strength and weaknesses of Team Melli as some of the reviewers around the net.
On the other hand, and from personal experience, the truly knowledgeable journalist and reporters whom one can depend on their analysis and reviews about Iran’s football, are the foreign reporters who reside or based in the Middle East. This group’s work is meticulous, thorough and one can really observe that the analysis has been researched properly.
For what is worth, we like to remind all, that Ashkan Dejagah and Reza Ghoochannejad were born in Iran and both speak Farsi.
