The FFIRI futsal committee has strongly objected to the AFC recent decisions taken on futsal.
The main grievance of the Iranians is the decision by the AFC futsal committee to hold the AFC Club Championship once every two years instead of the current annual competition. The reason behind the decision was due to the financial burden on clubs or federations and lack of interest from many AFC members’ states in carrying out this competition on annual basis. The majority of AFC member states do not have a regular or established futsal leagues. Revenues from the Futsal leagues are meager which does not allow the competing clubs to cover the costs of playing in the championship without the financial backing of the federations.
The other point of grievance of Iran’s football federation (FFIRI) is the denial of Iran’s request to have two teams in each championship. The AFC Futsal committee has not seen any evidence to convince them to award Iran two spots in the championship while the rest of the member states have one each.
Those decisions were made after the conclusion of the 4th AFC Futsal Club Championship where the Thai club Chonburi Blue Wave defeated Iran’s representative Giti Pasand Isfahan in the final after a penalty shootout. The Thi club had their Iranian goalkeeper to thank for this title after he saved 2 penalty kicks in the shoot-out. The competition was held in Nagoya, Japan.
Iran won 2 out the 4 championship, which far from what can be considered as dominating compared to the AFC Asian Futsal championship where Iran’s Futsal Team Melli has won 10 titles out of 12.
Seyed Reza Eftikhari , the spokesman of the FFIRI futsal committee said that his federation will be communicating with the other members seeking their support to overturn this decision. These members are the same ones that have come up with the decisions in the first place. Eftikhari also said that the committee selected by FIFA to oversee Asian Futsal is a weak one!
The AFC Futsal committee includes the influential Abbas Torabian, a veteran futsal administrator and the head of Futsal in FFIRI. When probed by ISNA sport reporter to the reasons why FFIRI is questioning and objecting to the decisions that has been taken while Abbas Torabian the long-time FFIRI representative was a party to these decisions making process, Eftikhari response was quite interesting “These things happen!”
Eftikhari then went on and said “In any case, the people who are in this committee are thinking about their own personal interest, while we are doing our jobs as professionals (..). Our condition is different from Senegal, Nepal or Bangladesh. Iran is competing with Europe and Latin America. !”
Hence, Eftikhari, has proven beyond any shadow of doubt, how pathetic and disorganized the FFIRI management is where the simplest of tasks, in this case communication and coordination between managers , does not exist while claims of being part of the elite of this world, is abundant.