Regardless to the outcome of the result by Team Melli in the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2014, Team Melli needs new blood, new mentality and a whole new idea to put Iran firmly on the Asian Football map for the AFC Asian Cup 2015 competition. This current generation of players of Team Melli is aging and Iran could very well be the oldest team in the World Cup. Apart from a few number of players in the current squad, Team Melli must look at the new generation.
Iran has never been short of young talents and potentials in football, what is lacking in this area , is management and utilization of these talents. The worst examples of misguiding and poor handling of young talented players are the league clubs. With the pressure to succeed or avoid relegation as the case might be, almost all the Iranian clubs are hesitant and reluctant to give opportunities to talented young players. It is very obvious if these young players are not given playing times, their chances of progress are limited or slowed down, some never reaching the potential. Subsequently, if there is no playing time at the club level, it will be even more difficult to be selected for Team Melli
It is simply quite difficult for the coaches of Team Melli to select a young talents into the squad without him being able to make the first team in his club.
There are some exceptions though as seen in Foolad Khuzestan club. The club from the south has won the league years back with one of the youngest or least experience squads on records. This season with 3 matches to go , Foolad Khuzestan might very well repeat that feat and win the title again by a young team. So, the myth that a team requires older and senior players to win league title is , not strictly true.
Currently , Iran is blessed with some wonderful talents in the right age brackets. Kaveh Rezaei , Payam Sadeghian, Alireza Jahanbaksh , Mohsen Mosalman , Sardar Azmoun, Bakhtiyar Rahmani , Arash Afshin , Milad Sarlak, Yaghoub Karimi , Ali Karimi (Sepahan), Amir Mohammad Mazloum, Mostafa Hashemi , Mehrdad Jamaati , Jallaledin Alimohamadi , Omid Allishah , Omid Ebrahimi , Shoja’a Khalilzadeh, Mehdi Sharifi, Milad Fakhreddini , Shahryar Shirvand are amongst the best. Many of them have represented Iran at international and continental levels in age group levels , most suffer lack of regular playing time.
With Carlos Queiroz being unlikely to be the head coach of Team Melli in January 2015, it all depends on the future coach’s vision and whether he will be influenced in using the same old players , or be courageous enough to go for the youth or a right balance of talented and seasoned players.
Nekounam , Shojaei , Khalatbary , Amir Hossein Sadeghi , Hosseini , Ahmadi , Jabbari and many others are on the twilight of their careers and have been less prominent in Team Melli outfits recently, The replacements are already available, it only needs a firm , ambitious and aspiring mind set to make it happen.