Tehran

An initial 24 players squad has been selected for Team Melli in preparation for the upcoming matches in the FIFA World Cup 2014 Qualification rounds. The squad will be flying to the UAE for the training camp where Iran was supposed to play a friendly match against Iraq. The UAE Football authorities objected and the game got canceled, however Team Melli has one friendly match arranged against Oman in that period.

The initial squad has no players from recently crowned league champions , Esteghlal as the Tehrani team is still engaged in the AFC Asian Championship league and will be playing against Al Shabab of UAE in a home and away round. The first match on Wednesday will be in Dubai with the return match a week later in Tehran.

9 players of the squad are from the other popular team , Perspolis who have just finished the season on a bitter and disappointing note as they lost the Cup final against Sepahan and were defeated in the last match of the regular season to drop to seventh rank in the final league table. This is one of Perspolis’ worst seasons in top flight of Iranian leagues , but such drawback apparently has not made any difference on selecting virtually Persepolis’s whole starting line up to Team Melli !

In addition to the 7  Esteghlal players  (Hashim Beigzadeh , Ali Hamoodi , Pejman Montazeri, Khosrow Heydari, Javad Nekounam , Mojtaba Jabbari and Farzad Hatami) who have been selected for the squad but not joining the camp until after the 22nd of May , it is expected that the legionnaires will also be joining the  training camp in the second phase. Players such as Daniel Davari , Omid Nazari, Reza Ghoochanejad, Andranik Teymourian and Masoud Shojaei will joining the camp as soon as the leagues they are playing in finishes the season.

The most significant absence will undoubtedly be of Fulham player Ashkan Dejagah, who has suffered an injury requiring operations and Ali Karimi of Perspolis who suddenly announced his retirement from football in the aftermath of his club poor results and defeat in Hazfi Cup final. Karimi has clearly indicated that he is not available for Team Melli selection.

In a separate statement to the press , an Iranian FA official has hinted that Mehdi Rahmati and Hadi Aghili , two ex-Team Melli players who have been disciplined by Queiroz, might be joining the squad soon. Apparently Queiroz had a meeting with head of the IRIFF Ali Kaffashian who asked the Portuguese coach to re-consider his decision on excluding these two players from selection since they both publicly apologized for their misdemeanors !

There was no comment by Queiroz on the case of these two players.