Iran assistant coach Roger De Sa has voiced his thoughts on his side’s humiliating 6-2 defeat to England in the FIFA World Cup group stage opener in Qatar.
De Sa is the right-hand man of Carlos Queiroz who was named as the Iran national team head coach two months before the start of the global showpiece.
Iran who are also known as Team Melli, couldn’t collect enough points to make it out of the group stages.
Out of three games that Queiroz’s men played in Group B, they were crushed by the Three Lions, won 2-0 against Wales and lost 1-0 to USA.
De Sa, who represented Bafana Bafana during his playing days, has revealed that their plan was to play a draw with Gareth Southgate’s troops.
The former Orlando Pirates mentor says, prior to the World Cup, they didn’t get enough time to prepare the team.
ROGER DE SA’S THOUGHTS ON IRAN’S 6-2 LOSS TO ENGLAND
“It felt like a tennis match, I thought the first set was over and we were going to play the second set,” he said in an interview with Marawa Sports Worldwide.
“To be honest with you, when we started the game, our plan was to try and get a draw, we knew that we would have to defend and make the game pretty ugly.
“Playing with five at the back, it was something that they [Iran] had never done before and we tried it out, we didn’t have enough time to prepare and it failed.
“It was the game that the coaches put out and it didn’t work at all.
“I must say that there was a stage when it got to 4-0, the only thing that you can think of on the bench is how do you stop the bleeding.
“I think the third and the fourth goal was so quick, you didn’t even have time to realise from 2-0 down to 4-0 that now this could be a record and we might be in the record book for the wrong reason.
“We managed to bounce back slightly, we brought on Sardar [Azmoun] which is our striker that had been injured. He wasn’t meant to play at all but we had to risk it then.
“We made a few changes, we went to a back four again and we played a 4-3-3 and we managed to squeeze in a goal and the second one.
“We made the score slightly better than 6-0 or 8-0.”
THE FUTURE OF DE SA WITH IRAN
According to the reports, De Sa’s future with Iran is unknown with parties set to hold talks for the way forward after the World Cup.
At the moment the former Bidvest Wits coach has scooped a gig as a World Cup analyst at SuperSport.
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