November 27, 2020
Dragan Skocic, the coach of the national soccer team, has led the team for his second match and chalked up his second victory.
The team defeated Bosnia 2-0 November 12 with the goals scored by Kaveh Rezaei, just seconds into the second half, and Mehdi Ghaedi, in second half injury time.
Skocic (pronounced sko-zik) was named coach in February, just before the coronavirus shut down soccer.
Iran didn’t play until October 8, when Skocic led the team to a 2-1 victory over Uzbekistan, with goals scored by Sardar Azmoun and Mehdi Taremi.
Skocic, 52, is a Croatian who has lived in Iran for seven years and coached four different clubs until being elevated to national team coach.
He wants a number of friendly matches to get to know the players and their skills better, but has so far been able only to get these two matches played. Others were tentatively scheduled, but then canceled.
The Asian continental elimination matches for the World Cup finals were all postponed last spring with the round half over. Iran is not doing well. Under its prior coach, Iran won two games and lost two, leaving Iran in third place in the five-team Group C. The eight group winners and the four best second place finishers will advance to the next round. So, at this point, Iran is pointing to elimination.
Iran has so far played one time against each of its opponents in Group C, Iraq, Bahrain, Hong Kong and Cambodia It will play the second games against Hong Kong and Cambodia (the two teams Iran beat) in March and against Bahrain and Iraq in June next year, the Asian Football Confederation decided in November.