Kinda surprising, wouldn't a news agency be looking for Iran to play Korea, given the opportunity for juicy "grudge match" storylines? Also, you can't be too sure about Syria, they might still be working on landing Mourinho behind the scenes...
True, but I assume that they care more about the success of Iran national team than anything else. Having Korea in our group makes the bigsoccer thread way funnier. Their analysis of best draw for Iran in the next round was interesting for me. It was also somehow different with what I expected. Their preferred draw was Iran, Japan, Uzbekistan, UAE, Iraq, Syria. My preferred draw after their analysis would be Iran, Korea, Uzbekistan, UAE (I put China before analysis of Isna news agency), Iraq, Syria. I really do not care who Syria hires as their head coach.
Group A: Iran. S.Korea. Uzbekistan. China. Qatar. Syria. Group B: Australia. Japan. Saudi Arabia. UAE. Iraq. Thailand.
The most balanced draw anyone can wish for. Group A: Iran shall be happy because they avoided Japan and Saudi, while getting Syria means an automatic 6 points for them. Korea will face difficulties against almost all of their group opponents. Uzbeks might be the dark horse. China can make problems for any team, especially Iran and Korea because of their historical rivalry + they tend to step up against big teams, and surely they can upset Uzbekistan as they did in the last Asian Cup. Uzbeks and Chinese might not qualify, but they will play key roles in deciding the identity of the qualifiers. Qatar... oh..... I think they get the hardest possible draw for them, Uzbeks will be harder than Saudis, Chinese harder than UAE and Syria harder than Thais. So I really think they have 0 chance even to reach the play-off, unless they benefited from other results. Syria is clearly the weakest team in this group, but they surely can get some points from the Uzbeks, Chinese and Qataris, they might at least decide the identity of the team who will finish 3rd and advance to the play-off. Group B: With 3 Arab teams, especially with UAE's golden generation which already knocked out Japan in the last Asian Cup, Saudi with Bert Van Marwijk as their manager, and the never-say-die Iraqis, anything could happen in this group. I think Japan will be the favourite, as they are better than Australia in handling teams from middle east. So I expect Japan either to top the group or at least finish second, while Australia might find it difficult even to finish in second place, and a play-off spot might be a big possibility. UAE and Saudi will be contenders for one of the top 3 spots. While the best Iraq can aim for is 3rd place. Thailand has 0 chance to either qualify or finish 3rd, but they shall make problems for some teams, especially Iraq and the Aussies (who will find it tough to adapt to the weather in South East Asia, as was the case in 2007 Asian Cup). Good Luck for all teams involved (and especially for Japan).
Our Schedule: 2016: 1/Sep Japan vs UAE. 6/Sep Thailand vs Japan. 6/Oct Japan vs Iraq. 11/Oct Australia vs Japan 15/ NovJapan vs Saudi 2017: 23/Mar UAE vs Japan. 28/Mar Japan vs Thailand. 13/6 Iraq vs Japan. 31/Aug Japan vs Australia 5/Sep Saudi vs Japan Our Schedule in 2016 is easier, with 3 home games + less distance travel. But we will have a tough schedule in March and August/September 2017.
on our side of the press reported that we got the easier group than japan. because of the overall travel on the away games are shorter on our side. we got near neighbor china and uzbekistan, .while japan got a long travel game against australia, saudi, uae, and iraq(a third country maybe played in oman). and japan got the tougher final final seed team thailand. thailand can give a couple of teams trouble.
Will be an interesting qualification. There are 8 good teams in Asia now, and few matches in this group stage will be a walkover. Syria, Thailand, Qatar and Iraq should be a level or two below the rest ( but certainly no pushovers), but the remaining 8 teams all have decent chances at getting a top 2 finish I think. There has probably never been this many good teams in the Asian WC-qualification, and who knows, we might see some surprises with either S-Korea, Australia or Japan failing to make the cut.
I agree that Asia is not just about the top four anymore. I agree that rest of the Asian team following the top four, namely Uzi, Saudi, UAE, Qatar can hold their own. But the best team of out that is Uzi. They're very good. Good enough to finish top two. So expect a shuffle finish on group a. With Korea, Iran, one of the two not finishing top two with Uzi getting a ticket to Russia. On group b, come on its Australia and Japan show. But remaining teams Saudi, UAE, Iraq and Thailand can cause problems for Australia and Japan. But do I see any of bottom four finishing above the top two? Unlikely. Highly unlikely.
Would've preferred China than UAE and Syria than Thailand but apart from that, it seems to be the easiest possible group. There shouldn't be any problem hopefully
I'm happy for UAE. Since Asian Cup we have a feud (in wrestling terms) with them and both match will be interesting. Same goes with Australia. A bit disappointed to miss China. They will not reach the 3rd spot and it will be a lot of time to wait before another chance to meet them.
There's nothing interesting about playing China, you can watch their players in the ACL. Otherwise the scheduling is pretty good with a good chance of racking up 9/9 points before facing Australia away. Now that the games will be a bit more consequential, I'd like to see what Vahid has up his sleeve in terms of individual match management - for instance, what will he do to take Omar Abdulrahman out of the opening match?
I've visited other forums and noticed that other Asian fans underestimate Japan nowadays. I think this trend started when we unluckily got eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2015 Asian Cup despite playing better football than 2011 Japan. Another factor is that we have been mediocre in the WCQ. I have to admit that we struggled a bit in the previous qualification round but I could see it coming easily. Only 1 year has passed since Vahid Halilhodžić took over the job. He wasn't that familiar with Japanese players and Japan's strength & weakness. He had to rebuild up the team under the circumstances. Do you remember Philippe Troussier? The French man led us to the round of 16 in 2002 but his first 10 games were disastrous, with a record of 1-4-5 including a draw against Hong Kong. Having said that, I'm optimistic about the future of this team. It's a good sign that we beat Syria 5-0 last month. We could have added at least 2 or 3 goals. I hope we'll destroy every team. Those delusional Asian fans putting us down are annoying. Look at this list. We have more successful players in the top European leagues than the rest of Asia combined. Even teams like Australia and Iran rely on players in non-top leagues. By the way, I'm tired of Australia. I wanted Iran instead. In 2005 we played against them in front of 120000 fans and it was fun.
Who cares? These WCQ are boring, I want some pepper like a match against the archenemy China can offer. Same goes with Qatar, UAE, SK and Australia. These feuds make the qualifications more interesting (for me).
Tough tough group, the first match against the UAE will probably set the tone of the whole qualifications. If we win big, we should cruise past this crop of opponents. Would be nice to beat this surging generation of Australians too.
Syria created some chances and deserved one goal in the second half, though. However it's because Yamaguchi got injured and Halilhodzic used Haraguchi as a defensive midfielder for an experiment. I'm not worrying.