Although Ivankovic affirmed that Mexico and Portugal are the favourites to move on to the knock-out stages, he appeared confident about his players' fitness in the squad, after a training camp in Switzerland.

Ali Daei In Action
Ivankovic has had success stories in his life as he was the assistant coach of Ciro Blazevic in the Croatian national football team during the 1998 World Cup. Croatia were the second runners up in that tournament. He has also coached German Bundesliga side Hannover 96 and has brought the best results the Iranian team has seen in International football tournaments.

In Iran, he is under heavy criticism from the fans and the media for his choices, as he left out of the squad players who can make a difference, like Foolad FC's Iman Mobali who had an impressive performance this season for the Ahvaz based team in Iran's oil rich Khuzestan region.

There is speculation that Mobali is not included in the squad because of a really hard tackle he did on Iran's captain Ali Daei during a Cup match against Tehran's Saba Battery FC and the two do not have good relations. Daei is also very influential in the team and is probably one of the reasons each time Ivankovic calls up Mobali, he is usually at the bench.

Daei has over 140 caps with the Iranian national football team and even though he is 37 years old, he still scores goals and is the key player in Iran's game. He is the only footballer to have scored over 100 goals in official International matches and amongs the 10 most capped players in the world. He is the undoubted leader in the team and he has a strong influence on younger players.

Branko Ivankovic confirmed that his team will be based around it's four German Bundesliga players. Hamburg's Mehdi Mahdavikia had an astonishing season, the same with Kaiserslautern's Fereydoon Zandi, Bayern Munich's Ali Karimi and Hanover's Vahid Hashemian. "They are my key players, they form the skeleton of our team," the Croatian coach said.

"Mahdavikia had an outstanding season. Ali Karimi is the soul of our game. Zandi and Hashemian have the capabilities to decide the game... The whole fabric of our team with experienced, young and key players make us a strong team," he added.

"I know Mexico and Portugal are the favourites from this group, but we are going to give it a good try. We know we can make it through to the next round... We feel we can beat any team."

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