Iran had already done well enough to advance to the final elimination round so last week’s game actually didn’t matter.
The star of the game was Ashkan Dejagah, an Iranian-born player who was raised in Germany and has played for Germany’s national youth team. He plays professionally with VfL Wolfsburg in Germany.
Last week, he joined the Iranian national team for the Qatar match—and he made all the difference by scoring both of Iran’s goals.
He scored first just four minutes into the game. But Qatar tied it up five minutes later on a penalty kick. Then, five minutes into the second half, Dejagah scored a go-ahead goal.
That looked to be it. But with just four minutes remaining, Mohammad Kasola, who was born in Ghana and has been naturalized as a Qatari so he can play soccer, scored the tying goal.
Dejagah’s outstanding play last week may make him a fixture of the next Asian elimination round.
Iran’s and Qatar’s Group E also has Indonesia and Bahrain, which played each other last Wednesday. And that’s where the excitement was.
The Indonesian goalie was red-carded just two minutes into the match. That expelled him from the game. Indonesia had to replace him with an inexperienced goalie as well as play with just 10 men.
That was a disaster for Indonesia. Bahrain won 10-0 as the inexperienced goalie spent most of his time picking the ball out of the back of his net.
If Qatar had not gotten that tying goal against Iran, Bahrain would have tied Qatar on points and would have displaced it in second place on goal differential by one goal.
FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, immediately announced it would investigate the Bahrain-Indonesia match. “In the interests of maintaining unequivocal confidence in our game, FIFA Security will conduct a routine examination of this game and its result,” FIFA said in a statement.
The other notable result in last week’s games was Saudi Arabia’s loss to Australia. That dropped Saudi Arabia from second to third place and eliminated it from the next round, a severe comedown for a once great team in Asia. The Saudis played in four successive World Cup finals from 1994 through 2006, but have now been eliminated from the 2010 and 2014 Cup finals.. The Saudis had a 2-1 lead at half-time, but in the second half Australia scored three goals in four minutes.
China had been eliminated earlier—underscoring the popular Chinese question: Why can’t a country of 1.2 billion people find 11 men who can kick a ball? China has scored wonders in many Olympic sports, chiefly individual events, but it has been decidedly second-rate in soccer.
The accompanying box shows the final standings of this round. The top two teams in each of the five groups now advance to the fourth and final Asian elimination round.
Those 10 teams will be divided into two groups of five each. After home and away games with each of the other teams in the group in June, the top two teams in each group will advance to the World Cup finals in Brazil in the summer of 2014.
The two third-place teams will play a pair of matches in September, and the winner of that playoff will face home and away matches with a non-Asian team to determine which goes to the Cup finals.
Asia will thus have either four or five teams among the 32 teams in the finals. Iran has twice before been that Number Five Asian team with the last chance to make it to the finals. Once it lost to the non-Asian competitor and did not make the finals; once it won and went to the finals.
Coach Carlos Queiroz, a Portuguese national, took over a disheveled and demoralized Iranian team in April of last year and has now led it through 14 games without a single loss. Under Queiroz, the scoring record is astounding; the team has racked up 37 goals while giving up a mere nine. Iran has won seven of its nine victories by shutouts.
Of the 20 teams in this round, Iran scored the most goals at 17, with Japan and Iraq trailing with 14 each. Iran had the largest goal differential of +12, with Japan next at +11. Iran did not, however, score the most points with three points for a win and one for a draw. The most points surprisingly went to Uzbekistan with 16, followed by Iraq and Australia with 15 each, South Korea with 13 and Iran with 12. Iran was one of three teams with no losses, the others being Qatar and Uzbekistan.
One of the key players of Iran’s Team Melli (National Team) says the main change that has brought the team success this year is the emphasis on offense brought by Queiroz.
Javad Nekounam, who plays professionally for Osasuna of Spain, says Queiroz has brought an offensive mentality to the team that didn’t exist before.
Nekounam told FIFA.com that Queiroz believes the attack is Iran’s strength. “Before, we used to focus more on defending. But Queiroz wants us to attack more,” Nekounam said. “He believes attacking is Iran’s main strength and that we can win more matches that way.”
