Azizi Shows His Worth in a 1-1 Tie
Is $700,000 too much to ask?
For Chris Armas, who scored the lone goal for the United States in its 1-1 tie with Iran on Sunday in front of 50,181 at the Rose Bowl, probably yes.
For Khodadad Azizi, probably not.
The Iranian forward lit up the Arroyo Seco with a series of dazzling dribbles, perfect passes and unexpected touches that brought his fans to their feet.
And that’s the point.
What if he were to play for the Galaxy?
“I think he’s an excellent player,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said after Iran held off a strong second-half comeback by the U.S. to earn the tie. “He’s an attacking player. He’s very skillful in tight spaces. He’s a very dangerous counter-attacking player, as he showed today.”
Until recently, Azizi was playing for FC Cologne in the German Bundesliga. Now, he is a free agent. In other words, he’s available to Major League Soccer if the league has any interest.
The Galaxy does, but is powerless to do much about it.
“Those things [signing high-profile foreign players] are always out of our hands,” Schmid said. “It’s a league issue.”
Azizi is being courted by teams in England, Turkey and China, but Iran’s three games in California have opened his eyes to the possibility of playing here. His $700,000-a-year asking price could be recouped quickly, judging by the enthusiasm of Sunday’s Rose Bowl crowd.
“When you look at the fans who are out here today, certainly an Iranian player would draw some people in L.A.” Schmid said. “But we also need a player from Mexico, and right now we have one foreign opening.”
The U.S. defense created a huge opening of its own in the game’s seventh minute, allowing Azizi to beat several players before threading a through pass to midfielder Mehdi Mahdavikia.
Mahdavikia sprinted between defenders Frankie Hejduk and Carlos Llamosa and slotted a low shot beneath diving goalkeeper Brad Friedel and into the left corner of the net.
“That woke us up in a hurry,” said U.S. striker Brian McBride.
U.S. Coach Bruce Arena called Azizi’s run “a fantastic individual effort.”
Oddly enough, it might have been the Americans who took the early lead had luck gone their way. In the second minute, a shot by Cobi Jones hit the left post. In the fifth minute, Claudio Reyna’s goal-bound shot was batted away by Iranian goalkeeper Hadi Tabatabei.
After falling behind, the U.S. looked unsure of itself on defense and lacked creativity on offense, at least for most of the remainder of the first half.
“We were in a funk, to be honest with you,” McBride said. “It showed early on. But we worked our way out of it, thank goodness and we started moving the ball a lot better. When that happened, everything opened up.”
Armas, nominally a defensive midfielder and best remembered locally as the player the Galaxy allowed to get away in the Jorge Campos trade, was the most accomplished U.S. player on the field and it was fitting that he scored his first international goal.
It came three minutes into the second half. Hejduk passed to Jones on the right flank, Jones crossed it into the goal area, Eddie Lewis purposely ignored it and Armas unleashed a shot that tore into the roof of the Iranian net.
“I’m not a goal-scorer,” the Chicago Fire midfielder said, “but I’ll take any chances I get. I just tried to get it on goal. I was calling for Eddie Lewis to let it go, and he did. It was a good ball by Cobi.”
Armas praised the Iranians’ play.
“Azizi and [Ali] Daei gave us trouble, also Mahdavikia,” he said. “It’s a good team, they play well together.”
Arena called the tie “a fair result” and, in answer to a question from an Iranian media member, said he would not be averse to the U.S. team playing a game in Teheran should the schedule permit and were Iran to extend an invitation.
“I think the problems we had early in the game were simply [that] we didn’t do a good job with Azizi,” he said. “He got a fair share of balls and ran at us and split us. We made some adjustments in the last 15 minutes of the first half and I think in the last 65 minutes we played quite well.”
In the second game of the doubleheader, the U.S. Under-23 national team--the Olympic team in training--defeated Armenia, 3-1, with Conor Casey, former UCLA star Peter Vagenas of Pasadena and Landon Donovan of Redlands scoring goals. Tigram Petrosyantz scored for Armenia.
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