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Sportinglife - Iran boss Branko Ivankovic
named his 23-man squad for this summer's World Cup and stated his desire to
lead the nation to the second round for the first time.
The Iranians have been drawn in Group D to face Mexico, Portugal and Angola
and the Croatian coach has set his sights on upsetting one of the seeded
teams.
"I have a lot of ambitions in mind, in fact my dreams have no limitations,"
said Ivankovic, who worked as an assistant to Miroslav Blazevic when he led
Croatia to third place at the 1998 World Cup in France.
"I want to win titles with Iran and we will be focusing all our effort on
reaching the knockout stages."
Under Blazevic, the Iranians narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 2002
finals - losing in a two-legged playoff to the Republic of Ireland - but,
having made it to the World Cup, the coach is fully aware of the difficulty
of the task in hand.
"I'm completely aware of the tough job we have in Germany," he said.
"But I have enough reliable players to count on."
Ivankovic's squad features veteran striker Ali Daei, who will be playing in
his second World Cup after appearing in France eight years ago, while there
are also five Europe-based players selected, including Bayern Munich's
former Asian Player of the Year Ali Karimi.
The biggest surprise was the selection of Saipa midfielder Masoud Shojaee,
who Ivankovic tipped to be a surprise star of the finals.
"I can say that we have a player in our team who will catch the eye in
Germany and catch our rivals off guard because he is a bit of an unknown,"
said Ivankovic. "His name is Masoud Shojaee.
"Masoud will certainly surprise a lot of people at the World Cup and he is
another talented player to emerge from Iran's never-ending resource of
football stars."
Iran: Ebrahim Mirzapour (Foolad), Vahid Taleblou (Esteghlal), Hassan
Roudbarian (Pas); Hossein Kaebi (Foolad), Sohrab Bakhtiarizade (Saba
Battery), Yahya Golmohammadi (Saba Battery), Mohammad Nosrati (Pas), Sattar
Zarea (Barq), Rahman Rezaei (Messina, Italy); Masoud Shojaee (Saipa), Hadi
Shakouri (Pas), Andranik Teymourian (Abou Moslem), Javad Nekounam (Al Wahda,
UAE), Mehrzad Madanchi (Persepolis), Javad Kazemian (Persepolis), Mehdi
Mahdavikia (Hamburger SV, Germany), Ferydoon Zandi (FC Kaiserslautern,
Germany), Ali Karimi (Bayern Munich, Germany); Reza Enayati (Esteghlal),
Arash Borhani (Pas), Rasoul Khatibi (Sepahan), Vahid Hashemian (Hannover 96,
Germany), Ali Daei (Saba Battery).
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