2023 Asian Championship (January 2024)

Following the 2022 World Cup, Iran began its search for a new coach. A number of names were tossed around, including Felix Sanchez, Herve Renard and Paulo Bento who had respectively coached Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea at the prior World Cup. In the end former national team coach Amir Ghalenoei was rehired for a second spell as Iran coach in March with a contract running until the end of the AFC Asian Cup.

The Asian Championship was originally scheduled to be held in China for June and July of 2023, however, in May of 2022, the AFC announced that China would not host the tournament due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and China's Zero-COVID policy. Later in October of 2022, the AFC announced that the tournament would be held in Qatar. Due to the high summer temperatures in the Persian Gulf and Qatar's participation in the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup, the tournament was postponed to January and February of 2024. The draw for the tournament took place in May of 2023 with Iran landing in an easy group consisting of the UAE, Hong Kong and Palestine. Featuring six groups, the top two sides from each group and the four best third-placed teams would advance to the elimination rounds.

Iran’s preparation consisted of a few low-key friendlies along with a Central Asian tournament (won by Iran against Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan), in addition to World Cup qualifiers against Hong Kong and Uzbekistan. A rumored tournament in Japan just prior to the Asian Championship never materialized. Iran finalized its preparations with a narrow 2-1 win against Burkina Faso and a 5-0 annihilation of Indonesia.

Ghalenoei’s roster of 26 raised a few eyebrows. Beiranvand still commanded the starting goalkeeper position with Hosseini and Niazmand as his backups and Abedzadeh falling off the radar due to his sporadic playing time in Portugal. While Jalali and the promising young defender Hazbavi were overlooked, the declining prospect Fallah was brought instead. Karimi and Nourollahi were both left at home although the latter seemed to be due to leaving the national team camp after being left off the starting lineup against Hong Kong and Uzbekistan. Taremi and Azmoun provided an explosive frontline, however, there was concern that there wasn’t sufficient coverage for them should there be suspensions or injuries to them. An aging Ansarifard and ineffective (in national team games) Ghaedi were the backups although many longed for Mohammadi or the yet-to-be-capped and quarter-Iranian Eckert who had been scoring regularly in the Belgian League and yet not drawing any interest from Ghalenoei. Overall the squad seemed a bit old with 16 out of 26 players being 29 or older, including the 36 year-old Ebrahimi.

Iran opened its tournament by facing Palestine. 

With the game barely a minute old Ghoddoos played the ball to Ansarifard, who curled his shot past the keeper into the far corner for a 1-0 lead. 

Iran doubled its lead from a set piece with Ghoddos the provider yet again, his floating cross to the far post finding Khalilzadeh who smartly turned the ball into the net to make it 2-0 in the 12^th minute. 

Palestine barely managed to get out of its own half and got lucky when Jahanbakhsh stole the ball at the edge of the box. In spite of the clear and yet unpunished pulling of his jersey, he managed to square a pass towards an unmarked Taremi,although a desperate toe poke by the keeper denied the chance.

Palestine conceded a third before the break when Ghaedi found the bottom corner from a flowing move. 

Palestine pulled one back in first-half stoppage time when Ezzatollahi headed the ball towards Iran’s net following a Palestinian set piece and Seyam pounced on it, scoring with a close-range header. 

Azmoun came on in the second half and promptly restored the three-goal lead by knocking in Iran’s fourth goal after a goalmouth scramble. 

Late in the game Azmoun had a breakaway only to be chopped down from behind. While the ref initially issued a red card, it was overturned by VAR. 

Iran would end the game as 4-1 winners.

With Azmoun nursing an injury Iran faced Hong Kong which on paper was among the biggest mismatches at the tournament, with Iran ranked 21^st in the world and Hong Kong 150^th, however, a disjointed and dull performance drew the ire of Iranian supporters. 

In fact it was actually Hong Kong, playing at their first Asian Cup in more than 55 years, who had opportunities early on, especially when Hong Kong intercepted Cheshmi’s sloppy pass in the back and Brazil-born Everton Camargo danced around Beiranvand and blazed over the unguarded net from inside the box. 

Iran did take the lead in the 24th minute after some fancy footwork on the left by Mohammadi when Ghaedi slid a shot across the six-yard box and past the despairing grasp of the keeper into the bottom-right corner. 

Later miscommunication between Beiranvand and Mohammadi had the latter chipping the ball back and over the keeper. It seemed destined for an own goal but Beiranvand somehow slapped the ball off of the goal line. Philip Chan sliced the gifted ball from inside the box straight into the arms of the recovering keeper. 

Moghanloo, getting his first start in the tournament, had his header saved and minutes later completely mishit a ball from just outside the six-yard box at the end of an unexpectedly even first half. 

In the second half Rezaeian’s freekick was acrobatically saved and later he sent his breakaway with the keeper out and into the side netting. In injury time Beiranvand left his box to intercept a ball and seemingly used both hands to deflect it although the ref refused to call the infraction or issue a card. 

After the game Ghalenoei would say that he was angry at his players' wastefulness although the 1-0 win was enough to clinch a spot in the knockout rounds of the Asian Cup.

The last group game would be against the UAE, a team that had not secured its spot in the knockout round yet. In spite of the result being irrelevant for Iran (other than for seeding in the next round), Iran fielded a near full strength team and produced an attacking display aiming for a victory. 

Taremi opened the scoring in the 25th minute, moving behind the Emirati defense to take advantage of an intelligent Azmoun pass before coolly slotting home. 

In the 33^rd minute Gholizadeh converted Hajsafi’s cross with a diving header, only for VAR to find him offside by the slightest of margins. 

The one casualty of the first half was Moharrami who was forced to leave the field after suffering ligament damage and would keep him out of the rest of the Asian Cup. Just past the hour mark the UAE could have reduced the deficit after VAR indicated that Kananaizadegan had made illegal contact with a UAE player in the box but Beiranvand dove to his right and saved Al Ghassani’s penalty kick. 

Just a minute later Azmoun intercepted an errant pass and fed Taremi with a well-weighted pass for him to emphatically convert into the roof of the net. 

Shortly afterwards Azmoun seemed to have given Iran a three-goal cushion although the linesman ruled him offside. 

Late in the game another VAR call had a goal from substitute Mohebbi overturned after he was deemed to have fouled Khalid Al Hashemi inside the box in the build-up following Jahanbakhsh's shot that ricoheted off the crossbar.  

The UAE scored a goal in added time after Al Ghassani broke free on the left, cut inside on his right foot and found the far corner with his finish to half the deficit. 

With the 2-1 win Iran topped the group with nine points and booked a date with Syria in the next round. Of note throughout the match was Iran’s players seemingly responding to the Arab crowd’s pregame chants of making Iran cry, as the players repeatedly mimicked crying with each of their goals.

In the second round Iran squared off against Syria who were reaching the knockout stage for the first time. 

Iran had a few chances before Aiham Ousou deliberately barged into Taremi without making any attempt to go for the ball in the 32^nd minute. 

Taremi stepped up to take the penalty, firing the spot kick into the bottom-right corner for his third goal of the tournament. 

Both teams exchanged shots and easy saves for the respective keepers for the half to end 1-0 for Iran. Early in the second half Azmoun broke free only to be thwarted by a double save from the Syrian keeper and subsequently a defender. From the resulting corner kick Azmoun’s goalbound header eluded the keeper but was cleared off the line. Minutes later Taremi found himself alone with the keeper but his shot was smothered. Syria levelled when Pablo Sabbag came on as a substitute and immediately won a penalty when he beat the offside trap and was fouled by Beiranvand, who was lucky not to get sent off after stepping on the Syrian’s foot. 

Omar Khribin calmly slotting the resulting penalty kick home to make it 1-1. 

Jahanbakhsh, Azmoun and substitute Gholizadeh each fired on frame but on each occasion failed to beat the keeper. 

Things went from bad to worse for Iran when Taremi was sent off for a second yellow card after fouling Alaa Al-Dali to earn another booking and reduce Iran to 10 men for the final minutes of regulation time. 

In injury time a ball fumbled by Beiranvand resulted in a mad scramble in which Syria fired off two shots on goal which were somehow blocked by Beiranvand and Ezzatollahi. Thirty minutes of extra time produced no results and the game went to penalty kicks. Ansarifard, Rezaian, Ebrahimi, Torabi and Hajsafi all buried their shots while Fahd Youssef saw his penalty saved by Beiranvand for Iran to emerge as 5-3 winners of the shootout and book a match against Japan in the quarterfinals.

Besides a spot in the semifinals on their mind, Iran also looked to avenge the semifinal loss of the prior tournament. 

The opening minutes of the game saw Japan make several bursts towards Iran’s goal but failed to convert their chances. Hidemasa Morita changed that with his goal in the 28th minute when his zigzagging run took a few lucky bounces and presented him with an open shot on goal which bounced off of Beiranvand’s outstretched leg and into the net. 

Ghoddoos had a chance to equalize before halftime after he chested a ball down but his shot went narrowly wide. Iran scored 10 minutes into the second half as Mohebbi slotted Azmoun’s through pass into the Japanese goal. 

Azmoun thought he had given Iran the lead when he ran on to a ball, entered the box and fired past the keeper, however, VAR determined that he was offside by the slightest of margins. 

Mohebbi later broke free from a cross but his header hit the outside of the side netting. Iran continued its domination in the second half when a cross from Mohammadi was headed goal bound by Azmoun and just missed the upper corner. 

A cross in stoppage time in the Japanese box was met with miscommunication between two Japanese players and when Kananizadegan stole the loose ball he was chopped down for a penalty kick. 

Jahanbakhsh took the resulting penalty and buried it in top left corner. 

The remaining minutes of the match yielded no more goals and Iran advanced to the semifinals to face hosts Qatar.

Against Qatar Taremi returned to the lineup while Ebrahimi also retained his spot. 

Iran had a dream start when Azmoun missed a first attempt on a throw in but the partial clearance fell kindly to him for him to execute a bicycle kick into the back of the net in the fourth minute. 

Qatar responded with a deflected equalizer from Jassem Gaber after his shot was partially blocked by Ezzatollahi and bounced over Beiranvand to tie the score. 

A mishit clearance in the 32^nd minute gifted Afif with a one on one chance but Beiranvand managed a huge save to keep the score level. Late in the first half another poor clearance was stolen by Qatar that enabled Afif to cut into the box and lash a shot beyond Beiranvand for the lead. 

Iran had a claim for a penalty kick waived off after Ghoddoos’s corner kick was redirected on goal by Kananizadegan and stopped by what seemed to be a Qatari player’s hand. 

Six minutes into the second half a bit of pinball in Qatar’s box ended up hitting Ahmed Fathy’s hand and Jahanbakhsh converted the resulting penalty kick. 

Iran took charge after the goal with wave after wave of attacks. Khalilzadeh’s header from a corner kick went close although was ultimately tipped over the bar. 

Minutes later Mohebbi flicked an outbound ball in the six yard box to Taremi whose shot was blocked and Azmoun’s follow-up header was cleared off of the line. In the 82^nd minute a hopeful shot from Qatar from outside of the box reached Almoez Ali who was just barely onside and whose own shot evaded Beiranvand to give Qatar the lead. 

Things went from bad to worse when Iran was reduced to 10 men after Khalilzadeh was sent off for taking down Afif on a breakaway. 

Qatar nearly doubled their lead when Afif dribbled along the endline and passed to Almoez. With Beiranvand charging out Almoez passed laterally to Ismaeel Mohammad who now had an open net at his mercy but somehow Mohammadi got back in time to block the shot. Iran had another crack at goal when Azmoun flicked the ball to Jahanbakhsh whose shot caromed off of the inside of the post, travelled across the goalmouth and went out for a goalkick. 

Almost immediately Qatar launched an attack which resulted in a 3 on 1 although somehow the Qatari players fumbled the ball and Iran cleared the danger. Azmoun had another shot blocked although the rebound fell to Asadi whose shot to the right ricocheted off of a defender and wrong footed the keeper to the left but went agonizingly wide. For the resulting corner kick even Beiranvand joined the attack but Qatar defended well and finally after 17 minutes of injury time the ref blew the whistle for a 3-2 win for Qatar and a semifinal elimination for Iran.

Iran roster: Beiranvand, Niazmand, Hossein Hosseini, Moharrami, Hajsafi, Khalilzadeh, Mohammadi, Kananaizadegan, Majid Hosseini, Rezaian, Yousefi, Fallah, Cheshmi, Ezzatollahi, Ebrahimi, Ghoddoos, Torabi, Gholizadeh, Jahanbakhsh, Mohabbi, Ghaedi, Taremi, Azmoun, Andarifard, Moghanlou, Asadi. Coach: Ghalenoei