TEHRAN - Iran national football team had a great run in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification. The performance of Dragan Skocic's side were outstanding and in terms of the results and the way we qualified for the World Cup, it was excellent.

Skocici has transformed the national team fortune since his arrival, claiming 14 wins and one draw out of 15 matches.

Despite qualifying for the World Cup for the sixth time, there is still a lot of work to be done. We should admit that the ‘Persian Leopards’ have impressed us with their consistency in this campaign. I think the Iran team's superb quality; is to go into every game to try and do your best match.

Some teams are in their best condition in every edition of the World Cup qualification, and others are not in good form. It's not accurate to say that Iran have easily qualified because of the weakness of their rivals.

Iran dominated Group A in the Qatar World Cup qualification and remained top of the group. It is because of the strength of the team and the quality of the great players, both in terms of teamwork and individual performance. The Group B of the Asian qualifications is tougher than Group A. It’s correct. In that case, I can accept it because it's true considering the presence of three big teams, namely Australia, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, in the group.

But, the most crucial point was that Iran performed as best as possible. The results are not random; they are the consequence of the consistency of a great performance.

The most central point about Iran's national team under Dragan Skocic was that rivalry between Team Melli's players is huge, and the level of difference is slight.

The question arises, what should we expect from the national team in the World Cup? In my opinion, we should not be irrational and should not expect that our team must qualify for the knockout stage.

FIFA’s planning for the World Cup is in favor of the European teams than Asian teams, and this makes things more difficult for teams like Iran, who need more time to coordinate players compared to a top European team.