Tag: Farhad Majidi

30 players are invited for Omid Team camp

The names of the Omid Team players were announced by the FFIRI. According to the official website of the Football Association, 30 players are invited for the U-23 team training camp commencing July 10th and lasting 5 days. The squad selected by Farhad Majidi and his technical assistants will also play a friendly against Team Melli at the end of the camp on 15th July.

Iran’s Olympic team is attempting to qualify for the Olympics football competition for the first time since 1980.

The names of 30 invited players are as follows:

Me’araj Esmaeli (Zob Ahan),

Mehdi Ghaedi, Mehdi Noorollahi, Reza Azari (Esteghlal Tehran)

Nima Mirzazad (Nasaji Mazandaran)

Ismael Babaei (Fajr Sepasi Shiraz)

Reza Shekari (Rubin Kazan, Russia)

Hossein Pourhamidi (Golghar Sirjan)

Mohammad Khorram Al-Husseini (Machine-Sazi Tabriz )

Aref Gholami , Vahid Namdari (Foulad Khouzestan)

Amir Roustai, Abolfazl Razzaghpour , Mohammad Khodabandehloo (Peykan Tehran)

Amir Mahdi Janmalaki, Taha Shariati, Abolfazl Jalali, Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh, Omid Dareh, Reza Jafari (Saipa)

Ramin Davoudi (Esteghlal Khouzestan)

Mehdi Memizadeh (Niroo Zamini)

Alireza  Arta (Mes Kerman)

Reza Jabirah (Sanat Naft Abadan)

Mohammad Mehdi Mahdikhani, Mohammad Aghajanpour, Sina Zamehran (Padidah)

MohammadReza Azadi, Mohammad Moslimpour (Tractorsazi)

Mohammad Amin Asadi (Persepolis )

Team Melli and Omid Team will set up joint Training camp.

Iran’s Team Melli and Omid Team will be setting training camps at the same time and end up playing a friendly match after the conclusion of the camp at the national teams’ Training camp in Tehran.

From 10th to the 15th of July, there will be a busy period for the national football federation teams in the training camps. The objective of this Team Melli camp includes further familiarization by Marc Wilmots with the team members.  Wilmots will be unable to call upon the foreign-based players of Team Melli and has to contend with the domestic league players.

However, in order for the Belgian coach to gain more knowledge of his players and to make changes as he deems necessary, this will be a good opportunity for him to discover further talents and proceed on his changes by allowing younger players the chance to perform.

Wilmots hopes to have a more solid idea for the team formation for the month of September and to organize a game on the official FIFA day. In the last two friendlies,  Wilmots used a mix of AFC Asian Cup and World Cup players in both the Syria and South Korean games. He is working on the team’s weaknesses, including defending, and said he was looking to fix the team gradually. Nevertheless, Wilmots said he is pleased with his team performance in the last two matches, his first at the helm of Iran, and in his recent interview, he said that he is glad that former national team coach, Carlos Queiroz.he had left a good legacy for him.

On the other ground, there will be also another national team training. Iran’s Omid Team Olympics hopefuls will set up camp at the same time sharing the facilities with the senior team.  Farhad Majidi , who has already set up a training camp in June, is looking to further improve the team for the much tougher assignment in Thailand in the qualifiers of the Olympics.

He will be focused on technical and psychological issues of the squad, which will mainly consist of previous players from the Omid team’s past camps. Majidi will continue to invite new players for the camp, especially since there will be tough competition for places and players need to show their ability to be part of the Omid Team, Majidi said.

The young head coach of the Omid team who is hoping to qualify for the Olympic Games is looking forward to the match with the senior team. Wilmots and Majidi teams will play a competitive friendly at the end of the five-day camps, which is likely to be played on No. 2 ground that has a natural grass surface.

It is also likely that Pejman Montazeri, who has just announced his retirement from international football, will be honored and appreciated by his teammates in the same camp. Montazeri played for Team Melli for about 10 years and has represented Iran in the World Cup and Asian Cup.

Estili “No restrictions on selection of dual nationality players for Omid Team”

The director of the Omid team Hamid Estili announced that there is no restriction whatsoever for using Iranians who are born abroad or have dual citizenship for  Team Omid

Estili said: “I think we have proven quite firmly that there is no difference for us. There are a lot of dual citizenship players who are introduced to us every now and then. first of all, we review their legitimacy and age-appropriate conditions. If the player has the necessary qualifications as per international standards and FIFA rules and their performances are approved by the coaching team, there is no restriction on selecting them for the team. In the previous camps, we invited some players e conditions, and this time we are witnessing the presence of two other players. If they are deemed to be fit for the Omid Team a

and their standards are good enough then they will be part of the team. We want the best players to be selected for the Omid team.

Hamid Estili commented on the recently concluded training camp for Iran U23 team and said: “Fortunately, we had a great camp and we monitored the performance of all the players for 3 days. The technical staff was happy with the camp’s conditions, especially since some of these players were not invited. We tried to invite many of the players in the First and Second Division leagues even lower age groups leagues in the camp and evaluate their performance, which I think was a success. In my opinion, some of the players we saw in the camp can definitely help us and are invited to meet the needs of the technical staff.”

Farhad Majidi has been selected as the head coach of Omid team with the goal of qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics games.

 

Farhad Majidi appointed as head coach of Omid Team

After a long and desperate search for a replacement for Zlatko Kranjcar, the FFIRI has finally selected Farhad Majidi as the head coach

The Iranian Football Federation was hoping to appoint a competent replacement to lead the Omid Team after ending the contract of the Croatian head coach Zlatko Krancjar. In the past few months, various options have been considered to coach the U23 team, from Amir Ghalanoei, Alireza Mansourian , Mehdi MahdaviKia, Javad Nekounam to  Hossein Faraki. But all of these coaches refused to accept the offer.

The federation was on the brink of singing Yahya GolMohammadi, but his club did not allow him to leave, as he was still under contract with Padidah. Mehdi Taj and Hamid Estili, the technical manager of Omid, eventually negotiated with Farhad Majidi, who was out of work, to be the new head coach. Estili confirmed the selection of Majidi in a statement to the media. The team must start preparation for the final rounds of AFC U23 Championship Thailand 2020 which is also the qualifying round of the Olympics Games Men football competition as well as being the U23 Asian Championship. The final rounds will be played in a tournament style in Bangkok, Ciang Mai, Pathum Thani and Songkhala.

Farhad Majidi is the least experienced of all the other candidates who turned the job down. He has only a few games under his arm as a head coach of Esteghlal after he was given the temporary post at the club following the departure of the German coach Schaefer.

Thus the football federation continues its tendency to appoint raw and unproven coaches for the Omid U23 team and hoping to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics 2020. Iran U23 qualified as one of the second best teams after hosting the qualifiers in Tehran and finishing second to Iraq in the group.

The tournament will start in January 2020 with 4 groups consisting of 4 teams. The first two of each group qualify for the quarter finals. Asia has 3 spots in the Olympic Games.  

The Draw

The 16 teams are drawn into four groups of four teams. The teams are seeded according to their performance in the 2018 AFC U-23 Championship final tournament and qualification, with the hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.

Pot 1 Pot 2 Pot 3 Pot 4
1.    Thailand(hosts)

2.    Uzbekistan

3.    Vietnam

4.    Qatar

5.    South Korea

6.    Iraq

7.    Japan

8.    North Korea

9.    China PR

10. Australia

11. Jordan

12. Saudi Arabia

13. Syria

14. Iran

15. United Arab Emirates

16. Bahrain