Tag: Zlatko Krancjar

MahdaviKia turns down Omid Coach job offer!

With Yahya GolMohammadi’s declining, the Football federation officials face a serious problem in appointing a head coach for the Omid Olympic team.

At the moment, there is no coach who is willing to take over from Kranjcar for the next major challenge of Omid Team.

Indeed, it’s safe to say that the FFIRI has run out of Options. There is also no hope for solution coming from the Olympic Committee. After the departure of Zlatko Krancjar, Mehdi Taj talked about replacing the Croat with a local talent and choosing an Iranian coach to lead the team of Olympics hopefuls. Hamid Estili’s main responsibility was to pick the right person for the difficult task, however one candidate after another declined the offer by the FFIRI.

The latest name that turned down the job is Mehdi MahdaviKia, who has already received his ‘A’ coaching License  from UEFA after the completion of the coaching course and has instead decided to go on vacation with his family.

 Mahdavikia, who has experience working with young footballers in his own academy as well as the Hamburg base teams and is popular with the general public, could be a good option, but he also rejected the federation’s proposal.

Mahdavikia, a household name in his own right and in response to Estili, did not believe that the current environment in Iran’s football to be accommodating and supportive to his appointment.

On the other hand, Yahya Golmohammadi and Amir Ghalenoei the two heavy weight candidates who coach in league title contenders clubs , did not fancy what would look like a downgrade to coach Omid team.

The pre-mature news of Yahya Golmohammadi’s announcement was not a clever move by the federation, as the coach has already agreed terms for a two years extension with improved pay with his club.

In this situation, some members of the technical committee of the federation, proposed to Hamid Estili to take over the job himself, but Estili does not want to do anything at all with coaching the team, preferring that a competent coach takes over the task.

In desperation, Mehdi Taj and Hamid Estili, the Team manager,  may well be forced into looking at lower tier names and not so successful Iranian coaches to take over the Omid Team Job. A practice that has proved disastrous not so long ago.

It was said that there are now some options to guide Omid team, which might not be acceptable to the fans and critics. Some of those caches have not fared well in their clubs and are not exactly too popular either.

It is feared that the final selection of a coach will be a disappointment with forced selection of weaker options. Omid Team barely made it to the finals in Thailand under Kranjcar who is a veteran coach with lots of international exposure. Anything less than him will mean a certain failure for Iran U-23 team to reach the Olympics for the first time in over four decades.

Omid Team is in search of a replacement for Kranjcar.

The issue of Omid team performance and the coaching standards of the team has been raised in the technical committee of Iranian football federation.

Hossein Kalani, a member of the Football Federation’s Technical Committee said that in the past two weeks, there has been several discussions on the dismissal of the Omid team head coach, the Croat Zlatko Kranjcar.

in an interview with ISNA, Kalani commented on the rumors circulating around Krancjar’s fate and his imminent dismissed from coaching Iran’s Olympic Team (Omid) : “I have heard this as well like the rest. However, as I was sick and resting at home because of the illness, I was unable to attend several meetings of the technical committee.”

“but earlier, there was talk of such intention because Krancjar did not meet the required expectations. We were quite lucky to qualify for the next round. The players did their best, but that draw against Iraq which had better goal difference, put us in the second place in the group. If one of other teams scored a goal or two extra in the final matches of the Asian groups, we would have been eliminated.”

He continued, “There was some lack of cooperation and coordination between Krancjar and his own assistants. There was a clear disconnect in the coaching team. I think there was some negotiation with Krancjar to release him. This decision was probably taken at a technical committee meeting that I did not attend.”

Kalani denied any knowledge of Javad Nekounam being considered as Kranjcar replacement.”“I do not have any knowledge of this subject.”

As an ex Team Melli player and one of the legends of Iranian football, Kalani is a prominent member of the federation’s technical committee, yet he is unaware of crucial and important decisions made by that committee. He can only guess what has been decided in the meetings that he did not attend !!!

Commenting further “in Iran, there are foreign coaches like Branko who are successful and Persepolis feels proud of him, There are other foreign coaches as will that have succeed in other teams,” he said.

“However, we have virtually never received positive feedback and results from the presence of foreign coaches. I have always said that if we provide the same working conditions, perks and facilitates afforded to foreign coaches, to our local coaches, we will get 100% better results. Most of the honors in our football history have been achieved by our own Iranian coaches, some of whom never even had coaching certificates nor attended coaching classes. “

“The familiarity of the Iranian coach with the culture and language and hence, the ability to communicate instruction, plans and objectives to the players is one of the most important issues that must be considered. The Iranian coach recognizes the emotions of his players. The national team has always consisted with the best players, and they do not need to teach them basic football issues and high tactics. The most important thing is psychological issues.”

Kalani is one of very few prominent people in Iran that is clean shaven and wears a tie in public or official meetings in a country that one can be easily considered as outcast , labeled as westernized and accused of being anti-Islamic for that. He is western educated and a successful businessman in his own right.

Omid Team to start the long road to Olympics in earnest.

Iran will kickstart their 2020 AFC U-23 Championship Qualifiers campaign from 22nd March in Tehran. The team, known as Omid Team, is under the guidance of the seasoned Croat coach Zlatko Krancjar and will lock horns against Turkmenistan in their first match before crossing swords against Yemen two days later and finally, their strongest rival, Iraq on 26th March.

Omid team held has held a series of training sessions and camps including playing friendly games against Syria and Jordan prior to the competition. Omid Team also played in a competition in Qatar where three U-23 teams took part. Iran won the title of that round ribbon tournament.

Tehran is hosting Group C of 2020 AFC U-23 Championship Qualifiers

 In preparation for the matches starting tomorrow, a post-match conference was held at the National Iranian National Football Center’s conference hall where all the coaches expressed optimism for their team’s chances while Iraqi and Yemeni coach criticized the AFC plans for the Olympic Games qualifiers.

At the beginning of the press conference, Turkmen coach Bayram Dordayiev said: “I know Iran’s football quite well, since I worked in Iran for several years. Iran’s football has a a colorful history and has produced players such as Ali Daei, Mehdi Mahdavikia and Ali Parvin in its history. Football is strong and powerful in this country. Iran is strong in the Olympics age group and has a youth team that plays well in defense and attack. We have a tough group. Iran and Iraq are powerful teams and we have information about them. Ultimately, the result of any match cannot be predicted but only the playing field will dictate the victorious and superior team.”

Iran’s coach, Zlatko Krancjar, said: “First of all, I wish to congratulate everyone on the occasion of the Persian New Year and welcome my colleagues from Turkmenistan, Yemen and Iraq to Iran. Apart from Iraq, we do not know adequate knowledge about the other two teams, we only know the Iraqi team and played two games and hopefully in the coming days we will be able to get the necessary knowledge of the other competitors.”

About the final list of 23 players in the squad, Head coach or Iran U23 team, Krancjar said  “We should announce the list beforehand. We set up this list, and the promise is that it can deliver our objectives. Some clubs did not cooperate with the team by holding their players.  Apart from the damage that was done because of that, there is no particular problem in the team. We were looking at the legionnaires, but the domestic players were better and more prepared”

Referring to the use of players outside the Iranian league, he said ” We have Reza Shekari from Russia but  we do not have Younis Delphi due to injury.”

Iraqi coach Abdul Ghani Shahid said: “We have great hopes to qualify. We succeeded in qualifying to the Rio Olympics in the last competition and hope we can repeat it again. Many think that Iraq and Iran will qualify from this group, but I believe the standards are too close to call. Asian Football Confederation has made a strange plan for the tournament. The AFC, which always pays particular attention to the quality of the players and the quality of the tournament, holds tournaments in tandem, and this affects the quality of the work. We did not use adult players in the tournament because they were engaged in the AFC Asian Cup with the senior team and subsequently entered this competition without them by using younger players.”

Yemeni coach Sammy Na’ash also spoke at the press conference “We are in a tough and strong group. The two teams from Iraq and Iran have a special lead in this group. The AFC’s planning for this tournament is not desirable, and competitions are held with the least rest for the players. We started the preparation program very late and we encountered a lot of problems, but we are doing our best to produce a good and decent performance.”

Zlatko Kranjcar is a leading candidate to coach Omid team.

The Iranian Football Federation is considering the appointment a head coach of Iran’s U23 (Omid) team to prepare and represent the country in the Asian Games 2018  Jakarta, although the team has already wasted a lot of opportunity, as the FFIRI Technical Committee should have selected a coach last month.

Federation officials have been negotiating with some domestic and foreign coaches during the past few days. Even the president of the federation, Mahdi Taj, told reporters yesterday that the talks are continuing, and this week the coach’s name will be announced.

The former head coach of the Sepahan squad Zlatko Krancjar, who failed to meet expectations this season with the Esfahani club, is one of the main choices for the federation, and even the Football Federation’s secretary Mohammad Reza Saket had talks with the Croatian coach.

FFIRI has always been a failure with the U23/U22 teams. For some odd reason, they have never managed to get their acts together at this age level and seem to have some complex on how to deal at this age level football teams. Most of the problems are self-inflicted, though including their chronic late preparation, and last minute search for a coach and finally poor preparations.

Krancjar, who has arrived in Tehran for a few days, is a favorite with the Federation officials who have started serious talks with him. It was confirmed that a meeting was carried out with federation officials in one of the hotels in Tehran, but the results are not clear.

Krancjar was the main choice to be the head coach of the Omid team in in December 2014 under the leadership of Habib Kashani, but the blatant intervention of the Ministry of Sports who claimed that the Croat does not conform for ethical/religious values (…), eventually meant that the federation so dependent on the government, had to shelve the idea of recruiting Karanjcar. Th coaching of the team was given to the novice coach Mohammad Khakpour, who failed to achieve anything and also failed to qualify for the Olympics.