Istanbul – BJK İnönü Stadium.
Team Melli Iran lost its first ever match under Carlos Queiroz when they went down to Albania 1-0 in a friendly match held at BJK İnönü Stadium , the home of Besiktas football club in Istanbul. The match was in preparation for the upcoming clash with Uzbekistan on 3rd June and was carried out as part of the one week camp in Turkey set up by the Portuguese coach.
The first half was goal-less as Team Melli started the match in a disorganized style with mainly aimless ball distribution dominating the proceedings. However , the team performance improved as the match went on but without much offensive prowess.
Albania scored their goal against the run of play when the midfielder Emiljano Vila pounced on a lose ball on the hour and shot to the far right of Alireza Haghighi in goal to score the only goal of the match.
Albania (84 in FIFA Ranking ) has already defeated another of Iran’s (52 in FIFA Ranking) group opponent , Qatar in the same city 2-1 a few days back.
At the press conference , Carlos Queitroz was uncompromising about about the match result and the fact that his players had 5 clear scoring opportunities 3 of which was one on one sitiution , yet they lost the match against an opponent who had only two scoring chances.
Queiroz asserted that it was a good game, and he will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the team from this match.
He continued “ I am happy with the team especially the defenders who had a good day behind the other player also demonstrated an acceptable performance on the ground and were able to match the opposing team under pressure to 90 minutes.
“From the technical point of view ,we have reached our objective and the match was useful but , but I was extremely upset for the loss.”
Asked about the new player Omid Nazari , Queiroz said that he was very enthusiastic about using the player in the line up to assess his performance , regrettably the IFF has failed to finalize his paperwork , hence he was not eligible to participate in the match as part of the team. Nazari holds a dual citizenship of Sweden and Iran and plays in the Swedish League.
Queiroz remarked that he was quite impressed with the fighting spirit and the motivating of his players in this contest and hence he is satisfied.
The Team Melli coach said that he did not use the main players in this match because of the fatigue of those players and the pressure of playing in the league and AFC Champions league.