TEHRAN – The head coach of the national football team has called up 18 players from the domestic league for a training camp ahead of friendlies against Uzbekistan and Russia.
Team Melli is scheduled to play two friendlies during the upcoming FIFA international window: against Uzbekistan on September 24 and Russia on September 29. Accordingly, the national team’s coaching staff has summoned 18 players active in the domestic league to join the upcoming camp and the matches against Uzbekistan and Russia.
The 18 players are:
- Alireza Beiranvand
- Hossein Hosseini
- Payam Niazmand
- Mohammad Naderi
- Ehsan Hajsafi
- Shojae Khalilzadeh
- Mohammad Mehdi Zare
- Aref Aghasi
- Saman Fallah
- Saleh Hardani
- Ramin Rezaeian
- Aria Yousefi
- Milad Sourgi
- Aref Haji-Eidi
- Omid Noorafkan
- Mehdi Limouchi
- Mehdi Mohebbi
- Amirhossein Mahmoudzadeh
The players will begin their camp and report to the coaching staff tomorrow (Friday, September 18) at 1:00 p.m. The names of foreign-based players will be announced subsequently, and players from the under-23 (Omid) team will be called up to the national squad in the next international window.
This list is a damning admission, not a plan. Once again, Ghalenoei has retreated to the same aging core that has repeatedly failed him when it mattered. His promises of new blood—pledges he made contingent on keeping his job—have been exposed as empty, cynical PR. The uncapped players are not the beginning of a rebuild; they are a smokescreen, a few convenient names tossed out to pacify public and media anger before the final squad is handed back to the same tired, untouchable veterans.
This is not leadership; it is self-preservation dressed up as squad selection. Ghalenoei’s mindset is the real problem: conservative to the point of cowardice, loyal to reputation rather than form, and pathologically resistant to renewal. His tactics are just as bankrupt, no clear identity, no coherent pressing structure, no courage to impose Iran’s will, and no plan beyond praying that an individual moment or an overused veteran rescues him. He has turned Team Melli into a monument to his own stubbornness, wasting precious years and a generation of talent. If this continues, the 2027 Asian Cup will not be a tournament Iran competes in with conviction; it will be the reckoning that exposes how much time, potential, and goodwill his arrogance and tactical inertia have squandered. And when that failure arrives, no one should pretend it was bad luck. It will be the inevitable product of a coach who refuses to learn, refuses to adapt, and refuses to put Team Melli before his own ego.