TEHRAN - Iran U23 football team missed the opportunity to reach the final stages of the AFC U23 Asian Cup Qatar 2024, which is qualifying tournament for the 2024 Olympics. Asghar Maziar, Iranian football expert, has hit out at the team’s playing style in the competition.

Despite having experienced players like Amin Hazbavi, Yasin Salmani, Mohammadjavad Hosseinnejad, Mohammadreza Bordbar, and Allahyar Sayyadmanesh, the U23 team lost 1-0 to Uzbekistan in their final match in Group E, causing them to miss the opportunity to lead the group and also failed to advance to final round in Qatar as one of top four finishers.

Reza Enayati's team missed out on being one of four second-placed teams in all 11 groups because of more yellow cards than Malaysia.

“Our players have a tendency to receive yellow cards easily in every match,” Maziar said in his interview with Tehran Times.

“The players and coaches often speak to the referees in an aggressive manner. The root cause of the problem lies in the Iranian domestic football, where the referees are influenced by the players yelling at them on the field and fail to take strict action against them,” Maziar added.

The U23 team defeated Hong Kong and Afghanistan but lost to Uzbekistan, resulting in their elimination from the Olympic qualifiers and adding to Iran U23's 52-year run of misery and failure in Olympic qualification.

Maziar believes that the technical and tactical aspects of the team's playing style were more crucial than the number of yellow cards.

“By looking back at the U23 team's games, it becomes clear that there were issues with ball possession, the number of passes, and opportunity creation.

“Our victories in the first two games against Hong Kong and Afghanistan were by three and four goals, while Uzbekistan won their same matches by eight and ten goals, respectively. This suggests that their team was better than ours when it comes to scoring goals and creating opportunities,” said the former head coach of Iran's U14 national team.

“There have been multiple ways for a long-term plan to qualify for the Olympics, but the football federation has yet to succeed in executing it,” concluded Asghar Maziar.