February 28, 2020
With just seven weeks to go before Iran’s next World Cup match, the Iranian Football Federation finally named a new coach Croatian Dragan Skocic, who has coached in Iran for years and knows the players.
Iran has done poorly in early Asian elimination matches and now lags in third place in its group, with the prospect of failing to advance being very real.
Skocic, 51, first came to Iran in 2013 and has coached four of the professional league’s 16 teams—Malavan, Fooland, Khooneh be Khooneh and Sanat Naft. He has a winning record with all four teams, but no championship.
Skocic’s career coaching record in Iran and elsewhere is 126 wins, 64 losses and 84 draws.
Skocic replaces Belgian Marc Wilmots, who abandoned the team late last year after two wins and two losses left the team in a bad position.
The national team is now scheduled to face Hong Kong in Tehran March 26 and Cambodia in Cambodia five days later. The final two matches of this round are against Bahrain June 4 and Iraq June 9, both in Tehran.
Here are the current standings for Group C. Only the first-place team in each group is guaranteed of advancing, though second place teams with the best records will also advance. Each team plays eight matches, so Iran is halfway through, having played each of its opponents once so far, and has played one game fewer than its opponents.
Team P W D L GF GA GD Pts
1 Iraq 5 3 2 0 9 2 7 11
2 Bahrain 5 2 3 0 3 1 2 9
3 Iran 4 2 0 2 17 3 14 6
4 Hong Kong 5 1 2 2 3 5 -2 5
5 Cambodia 5 0 1 4 1 22 -21 1