Team Melli arrived in the Italian Capital Rome early morning Saturday and immediately travelled by bus to Florence to set up a training camp.

Team Melli squad will be Italy for two weeks in preparation o the first two matches in the penultimate round of the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers against Qatar in Azadi and away to China.

The 23 players squad will be later joined by Ashkan Dejagah and Pejman Montazer both playing in the Qatar League to complete the group of 25 players named by Carlos Queiroz.

 So far , the IRIFF, which has published the news on its website , has not announced any friendly matches during the camp , but t is customary for teams in training to play at least one or two competitive matches

Also it was not clear whether the head coach was accompanying the team in the same flight to Italy. In the departure ceremony for the team that was arranged by the President of FFIRI Mehdi Taj, Carlos Queiroz was noticeably absent.

The federation is quite secretive and sensitive about the whereabouts of Queiroz, who has been frequently criticized for being out of Iran most of his time. Queiroz is believed to be somewhere in Europe and will most probably be joining the team in Italy at some stage.

On the bright side, Javad Nekounam has made his first public appearance as part of Team Mello coaching team. He joins the like of Markar Aghajanian as the local coach in the training team.

Javad Nekounam is the highest capped Team Melli player and has recently been selected by Carlos Queiroz to join his coaching team.