Ambiguous Survey Titled 'National Team After the Revolution'

The television program 90 in Iran conducts a weekly survey allowing millions of viewers to express their opinions about a post from the composition of the 'National Team After the Revolution.' For the past seventeen years, program 90 has been one of the most-watched programs on state television, and Adel Ferdowsipour has significant popularity among football fans. However, there have been many critics of this survey. It is unprecedented in the world of football for a national media outlet to base a survey for selecting the best players on a political event, yet program 90 has selected the best captain after the revolution, the best right defender after the revolution, etc., based on public votes. If the reason for choosing this time frame was that new generations are not familiar with the history of Iranian football, the survey could have been titled 'National Team After the 1978 World Cup,' which is both a sports origin and occurred in the same year as the revolution. The justification that the new generation is not familiar with older players lacks a solid foundation, as the election results show that most stars from the 60s and even 70s have not been favored by viewers. The selection of players for each position in the survey seems to evoke the 'selected team of Persepolis and Esteghlal' rather than a national team. Some critics, like Mehdi Pashazadeh, a member of the national team in the 1998 World Cup, argue that this is 'Ferdowsipour's selected team' rather than the national team. Viewers vote for players who have been active in recent years. Older players, if they receive votes, do so because of their club colors. In such circumstances, it is natural that if Cyrus Qaygharan, a star of the national team 25 years ago, is compared with, for example, Kamal Kamyabinia in a survey, Kamyabinia would receive more votes. But is the final result credible? What is the purpose of such surveys? Some players reached the final elections without having a stable or brilliant presence in the national team, while several prominent players were excluded from the final nominees for the same reason. The last survey held was dedicated to the right midfielder on Monday night, where Mohammad Navazi was one of the four main options. However, if the Esteghlal club were to introduce its selected team of the last four decades, it is unlikely that Navazi would make the final list. If the most important sports program of the state media only accommodates national players after the revolution, then where is the place for Hamid Shirzadgan, nicknamed Patlaki, who played a key role in the first Olympic qualification? What about Andranik Eskandarian, a solid defender in the 1978 World Cup, or Ebrahim Ashtiani and Mansour Amir-Asef, two of the best right defenders in the history of Iranian football? How about Iraj Danayifar, Reza Adelkhani, Hassan Roshan, Hassan Nazari, Homayoun Behzadi, and Hossein Kalani? In which selected team can a place be found for Parviz Gholichkhani, who has won the Asian Cup three times and played in the Olympics three times? What is the fault of these players who were stars of Iranian football before the Islamic Revolution? Vahid Hashemian, a former player of the Iranian national team and Bayern Munich, is among the critics of the 90 program's survey. He told ISNA news agency: if he asks who was the best player to throw a throw-in after the revolution, messages would keep coming until morning! Hashemian noted: 'In Germany, they also hold competitions, but the question is, for example, which team Beckenbauer played for. They don't ask whether Beckenbauer was better than Lothar Matthäus! Or send four 4s and six 6s! Then they say people should have culture and not curse in the stadium. While we provoke them ourselves.'