So far we have UAE, Thailand, Jordan, Australia, China, S.Korea, Iran, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Japan, KSA, and Qatar. Bahrain is a no brainie but the other three teams can be from Kirgyzstan, Vietnam, Oman, Lebanon, Palestine. Palestine chance is slim.
mods should merge all knock out threads into one thread. there is not enough traffic here to have a separate thread for ro16, quarters, semis, etc... or we can just continue in the "afc asian cup 2019" thread.
i hope thailand somehow beats china, even though it is unlikely considering they lost to india 4-1. china plays dirty and they are always a challenge in the knock outs.
Looking at the four quarters of the draw of the "big" teams (I defined this as the teams that made the world Cup) Iran has the easiest path to the semi finals. The toughest quarter imo is the one with Japan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Some reward for Jordan for winning their group in impressive style. Korea is probably favoured to make the semi final but I don't think it will be easy for them. My own nation is probably favoured on past performances but the way we have been playing doesn't fill me with confidence. I do think coming second in our group gave us an easier draw than coming first.
I'm interested to see how Kyrgyzstan does against UAE. I haven't seen such uninspired hosts since Malaysia in 2007. Their only win was against bottom-placed India, and they rode their luck in that match as well. If Vitaly Lux had his scoring boots on in their first game, I believe that Kyrgyzstan would have beaten China. Now that they've played against two of the big boys and the early tournament jitters are behind them, they can approach the match against UAE without any fear and just go for it.
Overall, this is a well-balanced bracket. The big 6 is equally divided. Iran, Japan and Saudi Arabia in the top half. South Korea, Qatar and Australia in the bottom half.
easy there tiger... qatar had an impressive group stage performance but this proves that you can pounce on teams with non existant defenses thanks to a certain imported african who single handedly scored 70% of your goals. i guess you proved that your defense is decent though because you held saudi. but even saudi... this saudi team is good in the midfield with nice fluid passing but they are deficient in the 2 parts that matter: defense and finishing. so you are yet to be tested against a strong team. so it is a bold claim to say that qatar is part of the "big 6" at this moment.
Second half time of extra time between Jordan and Vietnam (1 - 1 so far) Jordan scored first but got dominated since then but now both teams seems to be waiting for PK shootouts
Hosseini should have been sent off and Iran's penalty was bs. Iran has been lucky at this tournament.
Triple Punishment was cancelled like 3 years ago. You should update your football guidebook. If its one vs one and penalty occurred then its just yellow card, no sent off. https://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/new...e-have-taken-a-historic-decision-2768731.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...ball-rulebook-that-will-affect-euro-2016/amp/ https://www.skysports.com/amp/footb...ties-new-ifab-football-laws-on-show-in-france
Slept through the Japan Saudi game but watched our game. A win on penalties is still a win, but our weaknesses in attack are still there. Bad luck to Uzbekistan. Always tough to lose a game that way.