Pedro, I’ve been reading lately in the Iran press that popular opinion of him is the same there. He does not inspire confidence with his coaching abilities (or lack of).

Ivanković is not a real threat as a coach. His greatest achievement is as Assistant coach to the WC’98 team, and his presence there was non-existant. He got the position by being a good friend for the coach at the time Ćiro Blažević and did not really contribute to the success of that team. He is, at best, a coach for a second division team. He has no depth of understaniding the nuances of the game, is weak when it comes to understanding the advantage of changing team formations and has no concept of how to fix a problem within a team.

He believes hard work will win the game (running, running, running) and puts no emphasis on forming a tactical alliance between players. All Portugal needs to do is score a goal or two, Iran has a weak defense, and watch the team fall apart.

Oh, and as a side note..Know how he got the Iran coaching job? Again from his friend Ćiro Blažević. He lobbied for Branko to get it after Ćiro got let go.

But I do think CRO is very strong… As you know!

And well, I suspected (because of his name) that Iran’s coach coud come from a certain part of Europe, East of the Adratic… This cannot be a good sign for Portugal…