Afshin Afshar, lastkick.com

Thanks to the superior scheduling skills of the Asian Football Confederation, Team Melli will be without the services of its Spanish La Liga duo of Javad Nekounam and Masoud Shojaei, and adding to the list are a few players who are based on the other side of the Persian Gulf as well as those with knocks and injuries.

Scheduling the Asian Cup matches on outside of FIFA’s designated dates hurts teams like Iran, Japan, Korea, and Australia more than other Asian nations because these countries have the largest number of players based abroad.

Coach Afshin Ghotbi told reporters that the coaching staff had predicated not having everyone available for various reasons, and tried to prepare for the worst case scenario.

“We knew that we would not have a few of our players based abroad not available for this match, and we had counted on having a few injuries, that is why we invited 30 players to the camp.”

“The atmosphere at the workouts has been very positive and there has been a very healthy competition amongst players for the open positions.”

The team will leave for Jordan on Friday.