Expert Picks
New Zealand is the lowest-ranked team at the World Cup, and the All Whites limp into this competition having failed to score in each of their past three games. Iran, meanwhile, will be playing with a chip on its shoulder given all the adversity it's faced to get here. Plus, Iran has been playing well leading up to this clash, losing just three of its last 12 games.
I feel bad for the Iranian players and coaches because they are getting caught up in all this stuff and at such a disadvantage in this tournament with some banned from coming over and also having to fly back and forth from Mexico -- where they had to move camp from the USA. I'm certainly not rooting for the Iranians, but sports and politics should not overlap in my humble opinion (easy to say as I don't care at all about politics). They are without two key guys in forward Sardar Azmoun and winger Ali Gholizadeh. The latter is hurt and the former left off the squad for reasons that have nothing to do with soccer. Azmoun has scored 57 goals in 91 international matches.
FIFA rankings aren't always the most accurate, but what I will say is that they are accurate in the sense that New Zealand is the team that barely scraped in here, and out side of Curacao are probably the team that's the most outclassed. Iran are a solid side, and will be playing with a chip on their shoulder as VISA issues continue to plague this team while they are trying to prep. If anything, that will give Iran even more of a reason to succeed in this competition. New Zealand are happy to be here, and I have no expectations for them as a whole.
Iran moved up to No. 20 in the FIFA world rankings after sweeping their opponents aside in the Asian World Cup qualifying campaign. They’re unlikely to go deep into this tournament, but they have dangerous forwards like Mehdi Taremi, Mehdi Ghayedi, Mohammad Mohebi, Amirhossein Hosseinzadeh, and Dennis Eckert in their ranks. That should leave them with enough firepower to beat this limited New Zealand team. The Kiwis are No. 85 in the world rankings, which highlights the gulf in quality between these teams.