 |
Iran Hoping to Avoid World Cup Horror Show
Iran are determined to avoid a Halloween horror story when they defend a slender 1-0 lead in their crunch World Cup play-off second leg match against the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday.
The Iranians' World Cup qualification campaign has fallen apart in the past fortnight, with a disastrous 3-1 defeat against Bahrain scuppering their hopes of an automatic berth at next year's finals.
At stake in Wednesday's decisive match is the right to advance to a further play-off against the Republic of Ireland next month where a ticket to Japan and South Korea will be up for grabs.
For the moment however Iran's gaze remains fixed on Wednesday's second leg against opponents who they dominated in the first leg in Tehran last week but could not kill off.
Beleaguered coach Miroslav Blazevic, a sure-fire candidate for the chop if Iran fail to safely negotiate Wednesday's away game, said he had not given any thought to an eventual play-off against Ireland.
"We have to get past this stage first", said the Croatian, who hailed his team as 'world class' after last week's win.
"The Iranian team showed on Thursday that it is among the top teams in the world," Blazevic said.
"Anyone who is not admitting this fact is either blind, doesn't know anything about football, or is trying to destroy us. Obviously we had to score more goals, but we were too excited."
While Blazevic was reluctant to look beyond the UAE second leg, he was in his element looking back to the shock defeat against Bahrain, accusing the Asian footballing minnows of "anti-football".
"I have never seen anti-football in my whole career the way Bahrain played anti-football", Blazevic said. "I want to thank UAE for playing football and not resorting to anti-football," he added.
Meanwhile, Iran's midfield maestro Karim Bagheri said his team-mates were determined to avoid a slip-up against the Emirates, the surprise runners-up behind China from Asia zone Group B.
"I hope against UAE we get the result we want so that we can erase the bad memories of the Bahrain match," Bagheri said.
"We owe it to our fans to make sure we qualify," he said.
Star striker Ali Karimi, who squandered a hatful of chances in the first leg, is hoping for better fortunes in front of goal.
"We played well against UAE. But luck was not on our side, especially for me," said Karimi, who is nursing a slight niggle but is expected to be fit for Wednesday.
In This Section
|