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Kaffashian threatens to ban IRIB cameras from stadiums

Ali Kaffashian said that his federation will ban all the IRIB cameras from football stadiums, if the two sides cannot come up with an agreement on TV broadcast rights.

Kaffashian said “By the end of this season , the agreement with IRIB , the official and government owned broadcaster,will tome to an end. “We have talked to Zarghami (Head of IRIB) several times and told him about our intention to provide the State Run TV , an exclusive right of covering Iranian domestic football for a contract worth 160 billion toman ( Approx US$ 62,713,100 )” US total . If we do not reach an agreement , we will stop them broadcasting and covering matches. We are sticking to this contract , but we will give them a leeway by providing some discount !”

Currently , football federation receives a minute figure for the TV stations which broadcast the league and the Team Melli matches to the public.

There is no privately run TV stations in Iran and the failure to strike a deal with State Run IRIB means that there is no other choices but to have a TV football black out. Kaffashian and his administration are trying to provide a deal with the broadcasters on par with FIFA guidelines

Team Melli sponsorship deal falls through at last hurdle!

Tehran

After the announcement by the FFIRI that the federation has managed to agree terms with a local organization for sponsoring Team Melli to the FIFA World Cup 2014 following successful series of negotiations,  Abbas Torabian stunned the media today by announcing that the deal has fell through because the representative of the sponsors did not turn up for the final meeting !.

According to FFIRI the details and the name of the sponsor would have been announced anytime soon.

The meeting on Sunday was supposed to be the formality where both parties of this sponsorship deal would have signed, sealed and delivered. The absence of the sponsor representative can only mean that the two parties have not agreed terms and conditions, despite what the Federation has led the public and the media to believe. According to Abbas Torabian , who is the head of the marketing division of the FFIRIR, among other posts, the deal was quite lucrative and would have covered all the expenses of Team Melli to the World Cup 2014 without the need of financial aids from the government.

With the failure of this deal, the FFIRI will have to start all over again. The loss of time and revenue will not be good news for Team Melli already suffering from the lack of funds in FFIRI to support its activities and training schedules.

   Commenting on the deal breakdown, Torabian said “We had a fruitful meeting with this sponsors and we even had a meeting last night which lasted until 10 PM. We agreed to meet today (Sunday) for the final time to  conclude and close the deal. However, they did not turn up!”

It is highly unlikely that the version of Torabian is the full truth. FFIRI have not been very transparent about this sponsorship deal and the selection criteria. FFIRI also refused to formally acknowledge if a tender was submitted in order for all interested organizations to bid. Despite the pressure from the media, the FFIRI kept all the news and events about the sponsorship negotiation close to their heart for fear that announcing details of talks might jeopardize the deal.  However, the federation broke the good news a couple of weeks ago, in which they announced that an Iranian organization has been selected as the sponsors of Team Melli for the World Cup after gaining the confidence of the FFIRI. The preference of this, yet unnamed local Iranian organization, was despite the better offers from foreign organizations which would have meant a larger income. The refusal of accepting foreign sponsorship was due to cultural issues, as FFIRI announced, while citing that a signing of a sponsorship deal with the Local organization was imminent.

It was not to be, as the FFIRI is desperate to finds another sponsor soon.

FFIRI objection to the AFC futsal committee.

The FFIRI futsal committee has strongly objected to the AFC recent decisions taken on futsal.

The main grievance of the Iranians is the decision by the AFC futsal committee to hold the AFC Club Championship once every two years instead of the current annual competition. The reason behind the decision was due to the financial burden on clubs or federations and lack of interest from many AFC members’ states in carrying out this competition on annual basis. The majority of AFC member states do not have a regular or established futsal leagues.  Revenues from the Futsal leagues are meager which does not allow the competing clubs to cover the costs of playing in the championship without the financial backing of the federations.

The other point of grievance of Iran’s football federation (FFIRI) is the denial of Iran’s request to have two teams in each championship. The AFC Futsal committee has not seen any evidence to convince them to award Iran two spots in the championship while the rest of the member states have one each.

Those decisions were made after the conclusion of the 4th AFC Futsal Club Championship where the Thai club Chonburi Blue Wave defeated Iran’s representative Giti Pasand Isfahan in the final after a penalty shootout.  The Thi club had their Iranian goalkeeper to thank for this title after he saved 2 penalty kicks in the shoot-out. The competition was held in Nagoya, Japan.

Iran won 2 out the 4 championship, which far from what can be considered as dominating compared to the AFC Asian Futsal championship where Iran’s Futsal Team Melli has won 10 titles out of 12.

Seyed Reza Eftikhari , the spokesman of the FFIRI futsal committee said that his federation will be communicating with the other members seeking their support to overturn this decision.  These members are the same ones that have come up with the decisions in the first place. Eftikhari also said that the committee selected by FIFA to oversee Asian Futsal is a weak one!

The AFC Futsal committee includes the influential Abbas Torabian, a veteran futsal administrator and the head of Futsal in FFIRI. When probed by ISNA sport reporter to the reasons why FFIRI is questioning and objecting to the decisions that has been taken while Abbas Torabian the long-time FFIRI representative was a party to these decisions making process, Eftikhari  response was quite interesting  “These things happen!”

Eftikhari then went on and said “In any case, the people who are in this committee are thinking about their own personal interest, while we are doing our jobs as professionals (..). Our condition is different from Senegal, Nepal or Bangladesh. Iran is competing with Europe and Latin America. !”

Hence, Eftikhari, has proven beyond any shadow of doubt, how pathetic and disorganized the FFIRI management is where the simplest of tasks, in this case communication and coordination between managers , does not exist while claims of being part of the elite of this world, is abundant.

A friendly against North Korea is arranged.

Gholamreza Rezaei of Team Melli Against Lee of South Korea Tehran – 17th May 2012

The IFF and the Korea DPR football federation has provisionally agreed on a friendly match between the two teams to be held in Azadi Stadium on the 9th of October 2012.

According to Iranian News Agency IRNA reports , Mohammad Mehdi Nabi , IFF secretary has announced that he received a confirmation letter from his North Korean counterpart on the match date and venue. The match will be a very useful preparation for the upcoming World Cup qualifier against Iran’s main rival in the group , the powerful South Koreans.

The North Koreans , who were one of the Asian Representatives in World Cup 2010 in South Africa , failed to make the next round 4 of FIFA World Cup qualification rounds, however , they remain one of the stronger Asian teams. Despite having a poor record against Team Melli , the match will be a strong test for the Persians

Team Melli is scheduled to meet South Korea on 16th October in Azadi Stadium.