2022 Qualifiers - Other Games Thread (AFC & beyond)

[Ostad_Goosfand]

God truly loves Saudi. They play well but they have also had an incredible amount of luck this whole campaign.

Also China is embarrassing. All that money in their league, all those sponsors, and this is the best they can do? AFC and FIFA have always wanted China in major tournaments but they’re so bad. I’ll never forget how AFC rigged the draw for 2002 qualifiers where Iran, Iraq and Saudi ended up in one group, yet China was grouped with Uzbekistan and uae.

those 2002 groups were absolutely ridiculous. i still dont get how saudi and iran were in same group.

and yeah, saudi got pretty lucky twice vs oman and first game vs vietnam (Red card + PK). better to be lucky than good, lets see if they can perform this time, sorry but i dont count 2-1 win against that crappy egyptian team in last second when egyptian players stopped running. 5-0 vs russia to open world cup is all i will remember.

[Payam_Ali]

For those of you looking at FIFA rankings, Senegal's matches are weighted heavier because they are in the Africa Cup of Nations playoffs. Iran's last two wins were weighted 25 (so about 7 points each). Senegal's match against Cape Verde was weighted 35 (so they got 10 points). Their match tomorrow against Burkina Faso is weighted 40 (so a win gets them 15 points!) Worst is that because its the knockout stage against Burkina Faso, Senegal does not lose any Fifa points with a loss. Khak

[Malkay]

Well, they may be able to "get lucky" a lot in AFC games, but they won't on the world stage... They'll probably get 8 nil'd again by someone in their group

[Malkay]

For those of you looking at FIFA rankings, Senegal's matches are weighted heavier because they are in the Africa Cup of Nations playoffs. Iran's last two wins were weighted 25 (so about 7 points each). Senegal's match against Cape Verde was weighted 35 (so they got 10 points). Their match tomorrow against Burkina Faso is weighted 40 (so a win gets them 15 points!) Worst is that because its the knockout stage against Burkina Faso, Senegal does not lose any Fifa points with a loss. Khak

No probs. We root for Cameroon to beat Egypt in the other semis and then Egypt to qualify over Senegal, problem solved.

[milad_b]

For those of you looking at FIFA rankings, Senegal's matches are weighted heavier because they are in the Africa Cup of Nations playoffs. Iran's last two wins were weighted 25 (so about 7 points each). Senegal's match against Cape Verde was weighted 35 (so they got 10 points). Their match tomorrow against Burkina Faso is weighted 40 (so a win gets them 15 points!) Worst is that because its the knockout stage against Burkina Faso, Senegal does not lose any Fifa points with a loss. Khak

I don't think senegal is a problem for us because egypt will knock them out of WCQ. also if senegal wins on penalt they will lose 4.47 points . So lets hope King CQ beats them in WC qualifiers

right now we have about 1573 points (ranked #20) . I'm sure king CQ will qualify to world cup so it doesn't matter what senegal gets . The main problem right now is our game against south korea (that we must win) and Some of south american teams like uruguay , peru and colombia.

[Hosseini]

Have never been a fan of Branko but I have to admit he has Oman playing well

2-2 against Australia is a solid result. They scored a beauty too

[Hosseini]

It's worth noting their luck has come at the expense of teams like Vietnam who have really improved tremendously. Vietnam got robbed multiple times by really poor officiating in this qualifying campaign

God truly loves Saudi. They play well but they have also had an incredible amount of luck this whole campaign.

Also China is embarrassing. All that money in their league, all those sponsors, and this is the best they can do? AFC and FIFA have always wanted China in major tournaments but they’re so bad. I’ll never forget how AFC rigged the draw for 2002 qualifiers where Iran, Iraq and Saudi ended up in one group, yet China was grouped with Uzbekistan and uae.

[forzatm]

Have never been a fan of Branko but I have to admit he has Oman playing well

2-2 against Australia is a solid result. They scored a beauty too

And Oman had to field a second string side because of Covid.

[shahin2000]

Shahin Jan, people say this about Iran’s qualification group every cycle, yet iran does better than all of them in the actual World Cup (even Japan who made it to round of 16 in 2018 also had 4 group stage points).
These teams are lucky they didn’t play us.

Well Nokhodi jaan I beg to differ. And here how we have fared against our rivals in World Cup Qualifying matches since 1998:
1. Saudi Arabia (1W,3T, 2L) 1998, 2002, 2010
2. Japan (1W,2L)1998, 2006
3. South Korea (3W, 2T) 2014, 2018, 2022 (with one game remaining)
4. Australia (2T) 1998
In total, our record is 5W, 7T, 4L against the 4 giants of Asia. We have dominated South Korea. Japan is slightly better than us record wise and we are about even with KSA. Other than the remarkable 1997 ties against Australia, we have not played them since. The record is actually better than I expected but we are not dominating Asia in soccer like some folks indicate in the forums.
This is strictly World Cup qualifying from 1998 and beyond. I am not taking into consideration friendlies or Asian Cup matches.

[AGC]

This Australia side do not deserve to be in the WC. They're not what they used to be. They have like 1 or two players besides their GKs playing at highest leagues in Europe. One player for Eintracht frankfurt and another Celtic player? And of course as mentioned: Two GKs playing in EU. Compared to former Australian teams they're quite weak.

Saudi Arabia have a good team but they don't have any edge.

Japans team is old and they will not reproduce last WC results by far.

Guys: What I'm saying is that the other group is most certainly a group of death on paper, but it's not by far as hard being in that group as some ppl make it to be.

[AGC]

Also look at SA defending against Japan. I cried blood seeing it.

[tmfan]

We are definitely not the best in Asia when it comes to both WC and WCQ records....
We have never reached the Ro16 at the WC finals. Japanx3, Koreax2, Australia and even Saudix1.
Plus we won our final qualifying group only twice under the current system. Japanx3, Saudix3, Iranx2, Koreax2, Australiax1.

Even now, I still think Japan is better than us if you look at their squad. They have many top league, PSV, AZ and Celtic starters. When will we produce a beast like Tomiyasu? He is still 23 and is a main reason Arsenal went back to a CL contender.

[taremiscores]

We are definitely not the best in Asia when it comes to both WC and WCQ records....
We have never reached the Ro16 at the WC finals. Japanx3, Koreax2, Australia and even Saudix1.
Plus we won our final qualifying group only twice. Japanx3, Saudix3, Iranx2, Koreax2, Australiax1.
Even now, I still think Japan is better than us if you look at their squad. They have many top league, PSV, AZ and Celtic starters. When will we produce a beast like Tomiyasu? He is still 23 and is a main reason Arsenal went back to a CL contender.

if you look at last three WCQs (2014, 2018, 2022), we have the best record by far. Men like, women lie, but numbers don't.

hate this attitude of diminishing the best team in Asia by Iranians. All the big Asian reporters call Iran the best team in Asia while some in our fan base don't lol. We have the best forwards in Asia and it's not close; our defense thus far has also been amazing - we don't concede goals.

[forzatm]

When will we produce a beast like Tomiyasu? He is still 23 and is a main reason Arsenal went back to a CL contender.

He is what I wish Hosseini could be. I wonder why Japan has many good CBs compared to us. They have 3 CBs who are starters in top leagues (Tomiyasu-Arsenal, Yoshida-Sampdoria, Ito-Stuttgart) and many Bundesliga experts think Itakura (Schalke) is too good to play in the Bundesliga 2. East Asian people aren't tall.

[AGC]

He is what I wish Hosseini could be. I wonder why Japan has many good CBs compared to us. They have 3 CBs who are starters in top leagues (Tomiyasu-Arsenal, Yoshida-Sampdoria, Ito-Stuttgart) and many Bundesliga experts think Itakura (Schalke) is too good to play in the Bundesliga 2. East Asian people aren't tall.

True, but the kids in Iran don't aspire becoming defenders. Cultural thing. Then we have underdeveloped league.

But most important: Aren't these East Asian teams asking the same question in reverse? Ie why they can't produce strikers? Other than Son and Ansarifard, Rezaei, Allahyar (he is already better than 90 percent of asian forwards lol), Taremi, Azmoun ...etc all asian forwards are scrubs, bums and terriers chasing a ball.

Our most acute problem is our defenders don't go to italy. These japanese CBs are all aiming at going there. Belgium and Italy should be the destination for our defenders. On a side note this makes it even harder for the domestic defenders getting better as the expertise isn't that deep in comparison to midfielders and forwards working with iranian players after their carreers (ie hashemian, daei, nekonam etc)