I caught up with Farhad Andalibi for Part 2 of the series. Farhad is the webmaster of Iranian Football website IranGoals.com. Almost 18 years old, football captivated Farhad ever since he was a kid. He started following Team Melli from the Asian Cup held in 1996. A passionate Iranian fan if you ever will find one, I thank Farhad for agreeing to this interview.

Tell us a bit about the Road to the World Cup � the qualification, and the emotions the fans went through at the time.

We were all confident that we would qualify to the World Cup this time, but there were some unforgettable moments indeed. The 0-1 loss to Jordan at home was a shocking moment for all of us. We were playing much better than Jordan but one chance was enough for them while we missed more than 10 excellent chances.

But we still had another 90 minutes to go in Amman. One unforgettable thing about this match was that Vahid Hashemian came back again to play for Team Melli after refusing to play for a long time. Thanks to Ali Daei and AliReza Vahedi-Nikbakht who both scored a goal we won this match.

The most shocking and emotional moment was definetely the match against Qatar. After just eight minutes Vahid Hashemian scored the first goal of the match and we all were waiting for he second goal, but instead Qatar scored the equalizer. Again in the second half, Iran started with many goal scoring chances but all chances were wasted by Team Melli. Then only fifteen minutes from the end Yahya Golmohammadi scored an own goal. It wasn’t his fault but everyone was disappointed.

Even the commentator of Tapesh TV thought our WC dreams were over. But only 3 minutes later Borhani finished a beautiful pass of Kaebi and the game was level again. Finally in the last minute of the game we got what we deserved. Vahid Hashemian scored the third goal for Iran and we were qualified to the second round…

Read the rest of this entry »