Not surprisingly, Team Melli’s performance against Jordan created a large number of criticisms from experts and media alike.

One of those critics was Massoud Eghbali. A longtime trainer and currently a coaching lecturer with the Asian Football Federation AFC. Speaking to Mehr reporter regarding the match against Jordan, he said: “We have seen a frustrating game from the national team players. We are weak in all areas, and if the Jordanian players had made better use of their chances and their finishing was even average, we might have lost the match.”

“One of the major problems of Team Melli is the lack of a young player in the team. The majority of the players are old, and this fact reflects the Iranian team’s shortfall and lack of in-depth long-term strategy. Ghalenoei should adjust and re-think player selection because if this trend continues, he will definitely lack energetic players capable of playing in a demanding tournament in a short span of time like the Asian Cup and the World Cup. Iran’s Team Melli will be remembered as an old man’s home.”

The AFC lecturer noted: “Team Melli has a lot of weaknesses in the defensive structure, while we saw that during Queiroz days, Iran was renowned for its solid defensive structure. Instead of making progress, Ghalenoei’s team has regressed and this is not promising.”

He added: “The form of Team Melli with this style of the game is not satisfactory at all, and although most of these players have played together in recent years and have had a history of being in the World Cup, they were very sloppy, casual and lacked focus. One of the reasons may be the mentality of the players, who probably thought that the match was done and dusted in the first half as they were ahead by 2 goals. I strongly believe that the players should be motivated all the time. It seemed that they (players) lacked the motivation to play in these matches and need professional sports psychologists in order to guide them so that we don’t have to face motivational problems in the Asian Cup,” Eghbali said.

In response to the final match against Qatar, Eghbali said “I do not have an in-depth knowledge of the Qatar team under Queiroz. However, in this tournament in Jordan, they have shown that they are far from Asia’s top-level teams and were unable to score, only winning against Iraq on spot kicks. Hence, the coming match against this team cannot be a true test for the players. We must definitely face teams that challenge us, We need much stronger oppositions, teams that can rattle us and expose the weaknesses”

Comparing the programs of teams such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Saudi Arabia in FIFA Day with Team Melli’s program, Eghbali said “Teams like Japan, have reached a level of strength, where they can easily play against the best in the world and beat them comprehensively too, surely they are now believing in success at the next World Cup 2026. If the same teams from Japan, South Korea, Australia, and so on, turn up with their best players to compete in AFC Asian Cup 2023, we are unlikely to create a threat against them, and failure is a possibility.”

He continued: ” Ghalenoei is a good coach who does not like to lose, and the teams with whom we played against in the friendly preparatory games is a proof of this. The driving force of every team is its young players, Iran does not have such players in its squad. We have a high age average team, and if we factor in the Asian Cup, we should seriously think about the next World Cup.”

In the end, Eghbali stated: “The national team is in dire need of an overhaul, and the way players are selected should be reconsidered. We were not good at all against Jordan and the defensive duty players, holding midfielders and defenders, performed very poorly and were error-prone, so I hope we will not see such games from the national team in future matches.”