West AsiaTourney, A Good Challenge For Young Invited Players

PFDC - Head coach Branko Ivankovic, showed his happiness about his team's championship in Morocco two weeks ago in a press conference yesterday.

"It was not an easy tournament as many of the newspapers in Iran claim. There were two African national teams and one from South America. Looking at our team, you saw that I was just testing the players as many good players were not there such as Mehdi Mahdavikia, Samereh, Rezaei, Hashemian, Mansourian, Majidi and etc., even the good players who were in Morocco did not play much. Daei played only 48 minutes and Kavianpour less than 40. Dinmohammadi, Hasheminasab and Rahbarifard were not even there. I wanted to use younger players and I did. So taking all these into consideration, I feel we did a great job because I had not seen Iran wining a tournament of this magnitude recently so I am very happy and proud of my boys.", said the motivated coach.

"The West Asian Cup is another great test of our young players and to discover other talents so I invited players who had never been tried before. I traveled to Isfahan and Ahvaz to see a couple of games before I selected my players and I will do so again from now on. The Iranian future team can only be found among young players and I intend to find it. It will be a great challenge for our young players. After this tournament I will know more about the selected young players abilities and whether to use them in the future or not.", says Ivankovic.