Tag: Dinamo Zagreb

Smiles all across with Team Melli European competitions.

in the first round of this season’s UEFA club competitions, five out of six Iranian players were involved with their teams which all resulted in victories.

On Tuesday, Mehdi Taremi led his club Porto to a 3-1 win against Shakhter in Hamburg. Taremi scored one goal and was influential in another to start his campaign in a positive manner.

On the same night, Alireza Jahanbakhsh came in as a substitute and contributed a goal for his team Feyenoord in a 2-0 win against the Scottish champions Celtic.

Both the goals of Taremi and Jahanbakhsh were of high quality being praised by pundits.

On Thursday, AEK Athens with the presence of Team Melli Captain Ehsan Hajsafy who started the match, but was replaced by Milad Mohammadi, created the first shock of Europa League competition when they beat the south coast English Premier side Brighton 3-2 in a thrilling and eventful match.

In this match, Hajsafy was a major influencer as he gave away a penalty that Brighton scored, but then redeemed himself by providing an assist for the second AEK Athens goal. Hajsafy suffered a head injury and was replaced by Milad Mohammadi on the hour. Interestingly, when Mohammadi entered, the British TV commentator mentioned the AEK Players, nicknamed Milad “peep..peep” in reference to the speedy cartoon character “Road Runner”.

Due to the injury to Hajsafy in the second half, 14 extra minutes were added.

Sadegh Moharrami enjoyed the biggest win of the first round with Dinamo Zagreb after they defeated FC Astana 5-1 in Zagreb. Moharrami played the full 90 minutes and was one of the top-rated players of the match.

The surprise of the day, however, was the absence of Sardar Azmoun from the match sheet of AS Roma against FC Sherif. MOurinho’s team won that close match 2-1 away in Moldova with the winning goal coming from Lukaku.

The absence of Azmoun and Kristensen is due to restrictions imposed on AS Roma within the context of UEFA. For several years now, Roma has had to deal with the tight restrictions of the settlement agreement with UEFA over Financial Fair Play.

That includes the ‘transfer balance’ – so the current squad must be worth the same or less than last season’s group.

If that value is off balance, then the one way to get it back onto the right level is by leaving out new signings rather than those who were already part of the team.

Therefore, in order to make room for Lukaku, Roma has to leave out fellow new signings Azmoun and Kristensen.

So, it was a perfect week for Team Melli players with Taremi and Jahanbakhsh scoring while Hajsafy provided an assist.

Skocic still absent, Marijo Tot deputizes him!

The designated Head Coach of Team Melli in the pre-match press conference said that “Iran, as one of the giants of Asian Football, is looking to qualify to the World Cup and we want to win all our.”

Marijo Tot, the coach of the Iranian national team, in the absence of Dragan Skocic, who is still suffering from Corona and has been absent from the current training camp, attended the press conference before the game with Syria. He said: “As you all know, we have an important game tomorrow. We are in a difficult period and we have to get the best results in 10 games. Everything is going well and we only have a few injuries but that will not make our job difficult.”  He continued “we have to win tomorrow’s game. The games get harder every time you have to play an opponent. Our team has quality and experience.”

“As we showed before, we worked hard in Bahrain, but we were able to get the best results. The teams here are fighting hard to be their best in order to qualify.” Marijo Tot was asked about the bench for the Syria game and who will lead Team Melli from the bench. “I believe and we will keep our hopes high until the last moment that Skocic will be available and be with the team tomorrow. He has had very difficult days in the hotel for the past 15 days, but if that does not happen, we will definitely get help from him during the game. With 22 years of coaching experience, I know what is required and our conversations should be short.”

The 49 years old Croatian coach has been an assistant to Dragan Skocic in Team Melli.  He has been assistant manager to Vahid Halilhodžić at Dinamo Zagreb during 2010-2011 season. When Halilhodžić was dismissed in early May 2011, Tot takes charge of Dinamo for the remaining matches. He also guided Dinamo to win the 2010–11 Croatian Cup, defeating NK Varaždin 8-2 on aggregate in the final.

Tot Coachd in Malaysia, China, and Saudi Arabia where he was coaching for the Saudi Premier League football giant Al-Ittihad as assistant to the head coach Slaven Bilić, the most famous Croatian football manager.

Sardar Azmoun , the hero of Zenit St. Petersburg.

Sardar Azmoun was the hero of the night as his team Zenit St. Petersburg defeated Turkish side Fenerbahçe 3-1  to qualify for the next round of the UEFA Europa League.

Azmoun started the match , his first start with his new club and It only took him 4 minutes to make an impression when he assisted the first goal after he nicely chested the ball to Ozdeov in the six yard box for the Russian to score the first. That made the aggregate score (1-1)

Azmoun then headed a nice cross by Sebastian Druissi  to make it 2-0 for the Russian Champions. Fenerbahçe then silenced the home crowd when Mehemet Topal scored from long range volley with a stunning shot. It was 2-1 and 2-2 on aggregate , advantage Fenerbahçe.

 Sardar Azmoun, however scored the winner when he passed to marker on goal and slotted past the hapless Turkish keeper in the 76th minute.

It was a magnificent night for the Team Melli forward who was substituted out late in the match.

In Another UEFA Europa League match, Dinamo Zagreb defeated Viktoria Plzen 3-0 in the Stadion Maksimir (Zagreb) to qualkify for the next round.

Sadegh Moharrami played 90 minutes for his team Dinamo Zagreb.