Team Melli suffered it heaviest defeat in World Cup history after a 6-2 drubbing by title contenders England.

Jude Bellingham started the rout in the 35th minute, Arsenal star Bokayo Saka made it 2-0 on the 43rd, and Raheem Sterling scored the third in the 45th First half ended 3-0

In the second, Bokayo Saka was on the scoresheet again on the 62nd  to make it 4-0 before Mehdi Tarremi scored from a tremendous shot on the 65th. Substitute Marcus Rashford scored 49 seconds after he was on the field on 71st,  Jack Grealish (90) ended the scoring for England 6-1. Sardar Azmoun who was substituted managed to run past his English marker to face Jordan Pickford on one to one situation. The Everton and England keeper managed to save Azmoun’s shoot. and finally, the VAR review awarded a penalty for Iran where Taremi slotted nicely for his second goal of the evening. The match ended 6-2 for England.

The 45,000 fans in the 60,000-seat Khalifa Stadium in Doha, witnessed a superior display by Southgate players while Iran under Queiroz not only suffered its heaviest defeat but displayed poor control, lack of stamina, bad passing, and total collapse of the defensive strategy that Queiroz prides himself in.

Earlier in the half, a collision between Alireza Beiranvand and Majid Hosseini result in a bad injury to the Iranian goalkeeper. This resulted in a 14 minutes pause while Beiranvand was being treated . Finally, when Beiranvand treatment was over, and while still clearly dazed, he opted to continue playing without any objection from the medical team or the coaching staff, who must have feared losing their number one goalkeeper in detriment to his health. Alireza vividly in a concussion status could not stay focused for longer than a few minutes after the match restarted before he collapsed to the ground. A stretcher took him out while Hossein Hosseini replaced him.

This embarrassing, yet unexpected result was a culmination of many failures and shortfalls in the team. It started with the selection of a coach whose archaic strategy and game plans have proven to be a failure not just in Iran but Colombia and Egypt before it. In fairness, Queiroz was not given proper time for preparation for the greatest of championships like the World Cup, yet for whatever reason, he accepted the job offer despite its risk thinking he knows enough about the team he left three years ago. And the result was a disaster against a quality team in England. The old age team was clearly suffering in physical attributes against the much younger English team, Little preparation compared to other World Cup teams was also in evidence in the misplaced passes. Lack of confidence, concentration, and political turmoil back home were also factors in this heavy defeat.

Iran Line UP

Alireza Biranvand (19′ Seyed Hossein Hosseini), Sadegh Mohrrami, Majid Hosseini, Rozbe Cheshmi (46′ Mohammad Hossein Kanaani Zadegan), Morteza Pouraliganji, Majid Hosseini, Ehsan Haji Safi, Milad Mohammadi (63′ Mehdi Tarabi) ), Ahmad Nooralhi (77′ Sardar Azmoun), Ali Karimi (46′ Saeed Ezzatollahi), Alireza Jahanbakhsh (46′ Ali Gholizadeh) and Mehdi Taremi.

old agers