The game was played in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, which gave Iran home field advantage. But the biggest advantage of the game was handed to Iran in the very first minute when a Bahraini defender, Rashed Al-Hooti, was red-carded. That meant Bahrain had to play for more than 89 minutes with just 10 players to Iran’s 11.
The result was that Iran kept battering Bahrain with goals in the 22nd, 34th, 42nd, 62nd, 75th and 83rd minutes. The six goals were scored by six different players: Jalal Hossaini; Mojtaba Jabari; Hadi Aghili; Andranik Timotian; Karim Ansarifard; and Gholam-Reza Rezai.
This round of the preliminaries is now half over. Each team has played three games and faces three more. Iran tops Group E with seven points followed by Qatar with five, Bahrain with four and Indonesia with no points. The top two teams will advance to the next round.
The victory Tuesday means that the national team under Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz has not yet lost a match. In 10 outings, he has eight wins and two draws. Even more impressive, the team has scored 28 goals and given up only three.
Last week, Iran scored another impressive victory, racking up a 7-0 win in a friendly match against the Palestinian national team.
