Qatar 1-1 on the road to take first place this week in its group of the Asian elimination rounds.
Iran tops the standings in Group E with four points and a plus-three goal differential, followed closely by Bahrain with four points and a plus-two goal differential. Qatar has two points and a zero point differential, while Indonesia is looking outmatched with zero points and a minus-five point differential.
Altogether, each team faces six matches, playing each of the other three teams in its group in home-and-away pairings.
One third of the games are now completed. The remaining four games will be played October 11, November 11, November 15 and February 29.
The first match was played Saturday in Tehran’s Azadi stadium with about 60,000 of the stadium’s100,000 seats filled. Local news reports said the football federation had handed out free tickets to try to fill seats.
Iran dominated throughout the first half with most of the play taking place in Indonesia’s half of the field. But Indonesia proved stout on defense and shut Iran out for the entire first half.
In the second half, all that changed. Javad Nekunam, who plays professionally with Osasuna of Spain, bagged a pair of goals off headers in the 54th minute and the 73rd minute.
Then Andranik Teymourian came on as a substitute and put the gloss on the win three minutes from time when the Esteqlal midfielder netted Iran’s third unanswered goal.
Four days later, Iran traveled to Doha where it tied Qatar 1-1. The two teams frustrated each other throughout the first half, but Iran’s Hadi Aghili turned explosive quickly in the second half and scored within one minute to put Qatar in the hole. Aghili’s goal was especially sweet because he plays professionally with the Qatari Al-Arabi club team.
But Aghili’s goal was matched nine minutes later.
Under coach Carlos Queiroz, Iran’s national team has not yet lost any games.
In two previous rounds, the 43 Asian teams were whittled down to 20. Those 20 have been divided into five groups of four teams each. The top two teams in each group will advance to the next and final round of the Asian elimination matches. From there, the four top teams will go to the World Cup final in 2014 and the fifth ranked team will play a runner-up from another continent to determine whether Asia will get a fifth team in the finals.
Of the 20 teams competing, only two have won both of their first two games—Australia and Jordan. Seven teams have one win and one tie; they are Iran, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain and Uzbekistan.
Below are the scores for all the games in this round thus far. The host team is listed first.
September 2 matches
Group A
China 2, Singapore 1
Iraq 0, Jordan 2
Group B
South Korea 6, Lebanon 0
UAE 2, Kuwait 3
Group C
Japan 1, North Korea 0
Tajikistan 0, Uzbekistan 1
Group D
Australia 2, Thailand 1
Oman 0, Saudi Arabia 0
Group E
Iran 3, Indonesia 0
Bahrain 0, Qatar 0
September 6 matches
Group A
Singapore 0, Iraq 2
Jordan 2, China 1
Group B
Lebanon 3, UAE 1
Kuwait 1, South Korea 1
Group C
North Korea 1, Tajikistan 0
Uzbekistan 1, Japan 1
Group D
Thailand 3, Oman 0
Saudi Arabia 1, Australia 3
Group E
Indonesia 0, Bahrain 2
Qatar 1, Iran 1