Iran self-destruct

Expected to be one of the main challengers for the Asian Cup, Iran have been struggling in the last few years to find a way of moulding their European-based superstars and their home grown talent into an effective team. Their quarter-final exit at the hands of Korea Republic brought the nation's problems painfully out into the open.

Talent was never going to be an issue as Iran sought to add to their record of three Asian Cups, three Asian Games gold medals and two World Cup finals. The crucial factor in their Lebanon 2000 campaign was whether or not coach Jalal Talebi (pictured) could create a united front, with foreign and home based players coming together and two different generations of footballers merging as one to take the Asian Cup back to Tehran for the first time in 24 years.

The simple answer is that he couldn't. Internal strife destroyed Iran's hopes of a fourth championship. Rumours of senior players insisting on the exclusion of talented youngsters filtered out as Iran progressed through the tournament, stuttering along after their superficially impressive showing against Lebanon.

The opening 4-0 win, inspired by the work-rate of Karim Bagheri in midfield and the re-emergence of former Asian Player of the Year Khodadad Azizi, appeared to be a good omen for a team that knew they needed time to bond before making a serious run at the championship. With hindsight it can be said that their three late goals hid some fatal flaws.

With seven players joining the squad late as a result of their commitments with their clubs in Europe and elsewhere, coach Talebi's team were expected to start slowly, then gel and peak in time for the knock-out stages before going on to challenge for the title.

In fact, if anything, the opposite happened. In spells Iran showed the brilliance they are capable of during their demolition of the hosts, but the result masked the problems behind the scenes and it was only after the near-embarrassment of their desperate 1-1 draw with Thailand that the shortcomings started to surface.

Fingers were being pointed, publicly and privately, with accusations that senior stars such as Ali Daei were influencing the selection of the team at the expense of others. Talebi denied he was being affected by the Asian Player of the Year, or any other member of the squad, but the issue refused to go away.

It became a major talking point after Lee Dong-gook's sudden-death extra-time winner for Korea Republic sent the Iranians back to Tehran a week earlier than they had planned.

Many of Iran's problems are borne out of their success since the last Asian Cup, when they reached the semi-finals only to lose to Saudi Arabia. As a result of their performances, European clubs were queuing up to offer the likes of Daei, Bagheri and Azizi contracts. The offers were readily taken up.

As the senior players headed off to pastures new, a void was being created, especially as the ties between the players and their new employers strengthened to the point where they were unable to return home to play for the national team on a regular basis.

The scenario forced the coaching staff to look to Iran's future, promoting exciting new talents like Ali Mousavi and Ali Karimi to the full team in the absence of the stars. It was with a young team of relative unknowns that Talebi captured the West Asian Football Federation Championship in June and, at the time, the story was that many of this squad would represent the nation in Lebanon.

But the talents of the top players were too great to be excluded and the team arrived in Lebanon packed with the usual old faces. Suddenly, two different factions, each feeling they deserved to be given the chance to take Iran to victory, were meeting head on and, instead of working together for success, each, it seems, dug their heels in the dirt and pulled against one another.

As far as team selection was concerned, the seniors won the day but their failure to lift the Asian Cup has divided Iranian football with a war of words being conducted through the nation's press ever since.

Talebi returned to Tehran to hand in his resignation to the federation and shortly afterwards Mehdi Mahdavikia launched a broadside against the coach and the alleged favouritism shown to the older players.

"When I was 19 years old, I enjoyed playing on his team," Mahdavikia was quoted as saying. "(Former coach Mayeli Kohan) had wiped out interference from the players in the team.

"However since then it has resurfaced in our football, with players interfering in coaching and training. I personally cannot accept such things. Our players in Lebanon were so affected by this that some just wanted to finish the tournament so they could go back to their families."

The 23-year-old was saying publicly what many of the younger players had been whispering; that the old guard had too much of an influence on the decisions of the coach and that it had hampered their chances.

Talebi, naturally, disagreed but one thing that virtually all the factions did point out was that Iran struggled to play as a collective unit.

"We played like 11 individuals, we didn't work together," said veteran midfielder Hamidreza Estili after the loss to the Koreans. "Our problem is that our team doesn't play like a team.

"The tactics are not good, it's only the individual players like Ali Daei, Mehdi Mahdavikia and Karim Bagheri who take us forward. We're not good enough as a team. We don't train together enough."

One positive point that was raised as a result of Iran's dismissal from the tournament concerned the standard of facilities within the Islamic Republic.

While the majority of people focused on the failure, the divisions within the team and the perceived shortcomings of Talebi, federation president Safaei Farahani was pointing out that Iranian football needed a complete overhaul.

"The dismal showings in the Asian Cup are not due to the weakness of our team but to the lack of proper resources and programmes for our football which leads to these kinds of results," he said.

"Unfortunately in the government's budgeting, sport comes last and it is very hard to see our nation prosper in sport with poor financial support."