Team Melli landed in the early hours of Sunday morning in Tehran returning from Skopje , Macedonia via Istanbul airport. After the 3-1 win against Macedonia , Team Melli stayed in the country and continued training and preparation for the upcoming friendly international against Kyrgyzstan.
So far , all the squad members are in a good condition with no injury reported. The squad will stay in the hotel until the match day on Tuesday 7th June. The match will be played in Azadi Stadium at 21:00 local time (15:30 GMT).
HEAD2HEAD
The two neighboring countries have a very few number of games between them and no friendly matches at all. This is the first time the two teams are meeting in a friendly. The only two matches played were during the FIFA World Cup 1998 Asian Zone qualifiers were Team Melli came out comfortable winners in both matches.
Karim Bagheri tops the scoring against Kyrgyzstan with 3 goals in 2 matches while Khodadad Azizi has two goals.
Kyrgyzstan had a bit of a revival recently and despite failing to make the top 10 teams in the FIFA World Cup 2018 qualifiers, their performances were good enough to worry the opponents and never were the punching bag team of the group as some predicted. Their best achievement was defeating Jordan in the qualifiers 1-0 , the goal scored by Anton Zemlianukhin.
Kyrgyzstan never qualified for any major tournament since independence from the Soviet Union in 1992. Their biggest defeat remains the 7-0 drubbing by Iran in Damascus.
one of the promising players emerging in Kyrgyzstan is the young Akhlidin Israilov who is playing for the second string team of mighty Dynamo Kiev in Ukraine. There are several national team players who play their football outside of Kyrgyzstan but none at major teams.
IRAN | KYRGYZSTAN |
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FIFA Ranking | |
39 | 111 |
Current Form | |
Last 5 matches |
Matches
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