Unfortunately football is not mathematics. This has been proven so many times. Whatever happened at the WC quite frankly will be irrelevant. South Korea 2 Germany 0 South Korea 1 Phillipines 0 According to your math Phillipines are better than Germany. Anyways you certainly will be one of the favorites, but this tournament has been nothing but surprises so far, other than this current Iran v Yemen match.
Yemen I believe are the worst ranked side at this tournament. Although poorly ranked sides like Phillipines and India have impressed.
For the first 5-10 minutes of the game, it appeared that Yemen might be able to make this a contested match but the game soon became a turkey shoot. And what a turkey shoot it was! Congratulations to Iran.
Good performance! Hopefully before the Iraq match Gholizadeh will be recovered. We need to be more dangerous upfront. A few bad decisions were made with the keypasses but overall a good performance by Team Melli.
The deadline to include a player was 6 hours before the first match, thus Gholizadeh can't join the team anymore.
WTF IS HAJSAFI DOING ON THE PITCH OTHER THAN GIVING THE OPPOSITION GOLDEN CHANCES VIA HIS NEVERENDING BLUNDER GALORE? HASN'T THAT ABSOLUTE MORON CQ FIGURED OUT THAT MY DEAD GRANNY IS A BETTER LEFTBACK THAN HAJSAFI? AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO BENCH MILMO WHILE THIS IS HAPPENING?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This game was a disaster. We made Yemen look like France for the first 10 mins. And then we decided to play with 10 man instead of 11 while at the same time raising Yemen's players to 12 by fielding HAJSAFI as a LEFTBACK! 8 years at the helm and still doesn't know his players weaknesses and strengths.
🇮🇷😜✌️#BringingAsiaTogether pic.twitter.com/FNfi3kL9zr— #AsianCup2023 (@afcasiancup) January 7, 2019 🇮🇷🇮🇷🇮🇷#AsianCup2019 pic.twitter.com/fubUPGsYRV— #AsianCup2023 (@afcasiancup) January 7, 2019 Iran's goal machine ⚽⚽⚽ #AsianCup2019 pic.twitter.com/ia1OgVVGc0— #AsianCup2023 (@afcasiancup) January 7, 2019
Why is Hajsafi playing leftback? Why is he playing at all? What purpose does he serve? Also wtf was that dumb tackle that would have been a straight red by any competent ref by Majid? You can get away with this shit against Yemen, but this is exactly the sort of details that will bite you in the ass on your way to the top against stiff competition and cost you the championship which is all that matters.
Also a very pathetic and shortsighted move to take off Taremi and rob him of his chance for a hat trick which would have done wonders for his self confidence.
Val is right Hajisafi on LB can cost us dearly. CQ should move him to the midfield or use as a LW sub. Majid should stay calm and be more clinical like Jalal. Other than that we have been good so far.
I agree Milmo should be our leftback. Our team always has tournament nerves. Remember the first 15 minutes against Morocco? Mexico? Nigeria? It's the same with any coach.
Other than Iran v Yemen, this Asian Cup has been full of surprises. Vietnam is leading Iraq 2:1 at HT and it is not a fluke. They have looked slick.
Vietnamese players are too small to achieve big things. Sardar will kill them in the air but still they surprised me with their passing skills. They're much better than Yemen.
Vietnam vs Yemen should be interesting as a win for either side could propel either into the round of 16.
What a game.... The coach really messed up with his lineup. Played 3-5-2 for the first time, new faces in the lineup. It was a complete mess and Vietnam took advantage of that. Luckily we made it, but this was an huge risk.
Vietnam simply looked like they would concede nearly everytime Iraq went forward. If they could sort out their defense they would have beaten Iraq, and probably quite comfortably. Some of the passing by the Vietnamese was great (lots of first touch football and off the ball movement). The Iraqi striker impressed me lots ... a lone wolf a lot of the time, but a terrific work ethnic, good in the air, good finish, balanced and skilled on the ball.
True. Vietnam has potential. They just need to adapt to the highest level of Asian football but they're getting there slowly. Iraq looked disorganized in the first half, until the coach changed formation back to 4-5-1 and made some game changing subs. Mohannad Ali is the striker you're talking about. He already has 7 goals in 12 games. New Younis Mahmoud in the making..
this is Irans cup to win. this time around, i dont see any of the top asian teams being better than us. right now the top 5 are Iran, australia, japan, south korea, saudi, with uzbekistan as a floating 6th, then qatar. if saudi beats qatar and korea beats china and uzbekistan beats japan, then we will not meet a top asian team until the final. and we dont lose finals. we might lose semifinals (on penalties) but we dont lose finals. but the tournament is in an arab country so they will do their utmost to prevent us from lifting the cup inside an arab country, especially during these times.
we will get our revenge from iraq tomorrow. we will win by 1 goal and condemn them to a fate of knockout via saudi.