that was bloody awesome. good job Iran. Some great wins by these AFC teams. Begging for an Aussie W against Tunisia tomorrow lol
MD3 will be huge for Asia and its worldwide perception.....three teams that could advance or be eliminated.
Yeah getting some great wins is nice but at the end of the day most people will just remember who advanced from its group and who not. So, it's crunch time for the AFC to finish off the decent job they have done so far.
And Japan just screwed themselves by rotating their lineup and somehow managing to lose to Costa Rica. Not sure what the manager was thinking.....should have played the same lineup against Costa Rica that beat Germany and then rested players against Spain.
AFC's destiny will be decided by how they'll do against CONCACAF. Japan lost to Costa Rica. Iran and Saudi Arabia have big matches coming up against the USA and Mexico respectively.
It's not that mixed considering Tunisia is a crap team that should never even qualify for a WC. CAF sent 2 duds this WC.
They've been OK but just lack the discipline to seriously compete at this level. I'd have way more confidence in any of Nigeria, CIV, or Algeria.
Who would have thought Iran under CQ would be the 5th highest scoring team in the WC after match day 2.
Going into the last matchday I give only Iran a decent chance (>50%) to qualify. Saudi Arabia have the second highest chance imo. Then Australia albeit they need only a draw since I'm confident that Denmark will not go winless at a World Cup. Japan and South Korea have their hands full against two powerhouses in Spain and Portugal respectively and I don't see much of a chance for them to advance at this point. Most probable outcome imo is that Iran will be the only AFC representative in the knockout stage. Second most likely outcome imo is that we'll see no AFC team at all in the knockouts.
That's how I see it too. Iran or nobody. Iran and Quireoz are good at defending, but it will be dangerous to do that for 90 minutes against this US team who looked good against England.
As they just found out.....Iran was way too passive in the first half and were lucky to only be down 1-0. You can't play for a 0-0 draw against a team with as many dynamic attacking midfielders as the USA.
The lesson from today: if all you need is a draw to progress, the worst you can do is protect the score for 90 minutes.
I dont think so. I think with both these 2 games today the better team just did what they needed to do, despite having to do more. I dont see either of today's games going much differently if it was the first game of the group. We will see what happens with Ghana v Uruguay. I think Ghana may be able to hold on.
I think Ghana and Uruguay are much more evenly matched than Ecuador and Iran were. BTW Pundits favor Uruguay heavily, A bet worth looking into. Ghana is underranked in FIFA heading here becaue of poor AFCON. Massive upgrades with Kudus, Williams, Lamptey, Salisu, Samed (very good vs Korea!).
Ghana is probably going to win. Our frikin players are already criticizing our manager in public so I will be surprised if they win
I never cared about their afcon failure. People looked too much into it not having any context of the fact, they were not only missing a number of players, they had incredible bad luck. Ghana is always tough at world cups.