with an easy 4-1 victory over Indonesia following a heart-stopping 1-1 tie with Bahrain last week.
The Indonesia game was a cakewalk as Iran scored just seven minutes into the match and was never behind or even challenged.
Last Friday’s match in Bahrain was a different matter, however. Bahrain scored in the first half and Iran scrambled desperately all through the second half, not scoring the equalizer until two minutes into injury time.
Iran still has one more match to play, but it now has 11 points and is guaranteed mathematically to advance to the fourth round of the Asian elimination play, its hopes of making it to the 2014 World Cup finals very much alive.
Coach Carlos Queiroz took over a disheveled and demoralized team early this year and has now led it through 12 games without a single loss. Under Queiroz, the scoring record is astounding; the team has racked up 33 goals while giving up a mere five. Iran has won seven of its nine victories by shutouts.
With every one of the 20 teams in this round having played five games, Iran has scored the most goals at 15 and is tied with Japan with the largest goal differential of +12.
Iran’s last remaining match of this elimination round will be played February 29 against Qatar in Tehran.
The match in Indonesia Tuesday saw Iran win goals from Milad Midavoodi in the 7th minute, Mojtaba Jabari in the 19th minute and Gholam-Reza Rezai in the 24th minute before Indonesia’s star striker, Bambang Pamungkas, finally got on the board in the 43rd minute.
In the second half, Javad Nekounam converted a 72nd minute penalty into Iran’s final goal for the 4-1 victory cruise. Nekounam plays professionally with Osasuna of Spain.
While that game was almost sweat-free, the opposite was true in Bahrain last Friday. The Bahrainis game to play and kept the Iranian players bottled up much of the game. Bahrain’s Mohammad Al-Alawi scored just seconds before the buzzer ended the first half and sent Iran into the locker room in the unusual position of being behind.
In the second half, the Bahrainis continued to tangle and foil Iran’s strikers. After 90 minutes, injury time began with the Bahrainis ready to celebrate a victory. Iran fired up all burners for a last ditch effort at a tie and Mojtaba Jabari (who also scored in Indonesia) got the equalizer two minutes into injury time. Never had a tie been so sweet!
The tie was especially gruesome for Bahrain because it was trying to fight its way back from the embarrassment of its 6-0 defeat at the hands of Iran in Tehran last month. That Iran blitzkrieg was sparked when a Bahraini player was red-carded in the opening minutes of the game for a major rule violation and Bah-rain had to play with only 10 men.
The standings on this page indicate which teams have so far advanced to the next round. The top two teams in each of the five groups advance to the fourth round. Those 10 teams will then be divided into two groups of five each. After home and away games with each of the other teams in the group, the top two teams in each group will advance to the World Cup finals.
The two third-place teams will play a pair of matches, and the winner of that playoff will face home and away matches with a European 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 to be played in the summer of 2014 in Brazil.
So far, there have been no huge surprises in this Asian elimination round. The four teams rated strongest in Asia were each seeded in separate groups—South Korea, Japan, Australia and Iran—and each of them is in the top two of its group.
The main surprise has been in Group B, where Lebanon, the presumed whipping boy of the group has done very well, while the UAE, a presumed contender to advance, has turned into the whipping boy. Lebanon holds the lowest FIFA ranking of all the teams in this round.
The other noteworthy development is the elimination of China. China may be a great power in the Olympics and dominate all sorts of sports, but it is just second-rate at soccer. It has been improving in recent years—but not good enough to make the best 10 in Asia. The saying in China is: Why can’t a nation of 1.2 billion people find 11 men who can kick a ball?
Standings
Group A
Team GP W D L GF GA GD Pts
A-Jordan 5 4 0 1 10 4 +6 12
A-Iraq 5 4 0 1 7 3 +4 12
e-China 5 2 0 3 7 5 +2 6
e-Singapore 5 0 0 5 1 13 -12 0
China 2, Singapore 1
Iraq 0, Jordan 2
Singapore 0, Iraq 2
Jordan 2, China 1
Singapore 0 Jordan 3
China 0, Iraq 1
Jordan 2, Singapore 0
Iraq 1, China 0
Singapore 0, China 4
Jordan 1, Iraq 3
Group B
Team GP W D L GF GA GD Pts
S. Korea 5 3 1 1 12 4 +8 10
Lebanon 5 3 1 1 8 10 -2 10
Kuwait 5 2 2 1 8 7 +1 8
e-UAE 5 0 0 5 5 12 -7 0
S.Korea 6, Lebanon 0
UAE 2, Kuwait 3
Lebanon 3, UAE 1
Kuwait 1, S. Korea 1
Lebanon 2, Kuwait 2
S.Korea 2, UAE 1
Kuwait 0, Lebanon 1
UAE 0, S.Korea 2
Lebanon 2, S.Korea 1
Kuwait 2, UAE 1
Group C
Team GP W D L GF GA GD Pts
A-Uzbek. 5 4 1 0 7 1 +6 13
A-Japan 5 3 1 1 14 2 +12 10
e-N.Korea 5 2 0 3 2 3 -1 6
e-Tajikistan 5 0 0 5 0 17 -17 0
Japan 1, N.Korea 0
Tajikistan 0, Uzbekistan 1
N.Korea 1, Tajikistan 0
Uzbekistan 1, Japan 1
N.Korea 0, Uzbekistan 1
Japan 8, Tajikistan 0
Uzbekistan 1, N.Korea 0
Tajikistan 0, Japan 4
N.Korea 1, Japan 0
Uzbekistan 3, Tajikistan 0
Group D
Team GP W D L GF GA GD Pts
A-Australia 5 4 0 1 9 3 +6 12
S.Arabia 5 1 3 1 4 3 +1 6
Oman 5 1 2 2 1 6 -5 5
Thailand 5 1 1 3 4 6 -2 4
Australia 2, Thailand 1
Oman 0, S.Arabia 0
Thailand 3, Oman 0
S.Arabia 1, Australia 3
Thailand 0, S.Arabia 0
Australia 3, Oman 0
Oman 1, Australia 0
S.Arabia 3, Thailand 0
Thailand 0, Australia 1
S.Arabia 0, Oman 0
Group E
Team GP W D L GF GA GD Pts
A-Iran 5 3 2 0 15 3 +12 11
Qatar 5 2 3 0 8 3 +5 9
Bahrain 5 1 3 1 3 7 – 4 6
e-Indonesia 5 0 0 5 3 16 -13 0
Iran 3, Indonesia 0
Bahrain 0, Qatar 0
Indonesia 0, Bahrain 2
Qatar 1, Iran 1
Indonesia 2, Qatar 3
Iran 6, Bahrain 0
Qatar 4, Indonesia 0
Bahrain 1, Iran 1
Indonesia 1, Iran 4
Qatar 0, Bahrain 0
The top two teams in each of these groups advance to the next round of elimination play.
All of the above teams have one more game to play. All of those will be played on February 29.
Home team listed first under scores
A = advances to next round. e=eliminated
GP = Games Played; W = Win; D = Draw; L = Loss; GF = Goals For; GA = Goals Against; GD = Goal Differential; Pts = Points (3 for a win; 1 for a draw)