Afshin Afshar, lastkick.com
You know, we Iranian football fans were primed for some good news and the U17 boys gave us exactly that. They are the first ever Iranian football team of any age group to make it past the first round in a FIFA World Cup tournament.
They made it through yesterday by defeating Netherlands in their final group stage match, and then had to wait for 24 hours to find out who their opponents would be. Well, today Italy and Uruguay played a goalless draw in their last Group F match. As a result Italy won the group and Uruguay placed third, and that gained them a ticket to the next round and a face-to-face with our boys on Thursday, November 5.
If, and I am saying "if" because I do not want to jinx them, they go past Uruguay, they will have to play the winner of Spain and Burkina Faso. But let's not look that far yet! We have a tough match coming up against Uruguay.
No matter what happens on Thursday, these boys made us proud.
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November 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 am
Let’s see if we can catch it on TV somewhere…..
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
I have seen their game, they have very skillfull players who play well together.
I believe they go far, perhaps to final if they can pass Spain, who very well right now with 3 forward in the front.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Afshin;
aparently what you said is not true, Iran Olympic team in 1976 progressed to the second round! according to FIFA.
November 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Hi Kav,
Hi Kav,
You are correct and I was aware of that and I actually watched their games that year (Now I am dating myself), but I did not include them because I was focusing on “FIFA World Cups”, and not Olympics. One more thing, in those years the Olympic rule was that only armatures could participate, so countries from Eastern Europe and other third world countries like Iran who did not have a professional league, would field their senior team and they’d get to play against a bunch on inexperienced youngsters from Europe and South America; not exactly fair.
Just take a look at our roster for that 1976 Olympic:
o Mansour Rashidi
o Hassan Nazari
o Andranik Eskandarian
o Bijan Zolfagharnasab
o Parviz Ghelichkhani
o Ebrahim Ghasempour
o Ali Parvin
o Nasrollah Abdollahi
o Nasser Nouraei
o Hassan Rowshan
o Alireza Khorshidi
o Hassan Nayebagha
o Gholam Hossein Mazloumi
o Sahamoddin Mirfakhraei
o Ghafour Jahani
o Alireza Azizi
o Nasser Hejazi
No exactly spring chickens at that time