of injury play Sunday after 90 minutes of rather listless and uninspiring play by the Iranian team.
It was Iran’s first match of the final Asian elimination round for the World Cup.
The Uzbeks were on the attack many times and appeared to have the better part of the play—apart from the absence of any goals. But the Uzbeks insisted strongly that they did score in the 75th minute, and that the referee didn’t see that the ball crossed the goal line before an Iranian player in the net bounced it back out.
The Uzbeks argued furiously, but the Japanese referee refused to change his call.
FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, has been debating the use of an electronic device to determine when a ball penetrates the goal line—and, in fact, was testing such a device in a game played the day before the Iran-Uzbekistan match.
The 1-0 victory for Iran came at the start of the fourth and final round of Asian elimination matches for the World Cup. A total of 43 Asian teams started out last summer and have now been pruned to the final 10, with four—and possibly five—of them going to the global finals in Brazil in 2014.
In Sunday’s game, Iranian substitute Mohammad Khalat-bari scored in the fourth minute of stoppage time.
Having created no openings during the 90 minutes of regulation play, Iran produced a deva-statingly swift break with their last attack, which Khalatbari calmly concluded by slotting a left-foot shot home.
Earlier, the Uzbeks were enraged when they were not awarded a goal in the 75th minute by the Japanese referee despite Odil Akhmedov’s effort appearing to some to have crossed the line.
After a scramble in the penalty area, Akhmedov struck a shot from inside the six-yard box that Iran defender Jalal Hossaini, standing near the goal line, blocked and then cleared. Agence France Press later reported that “TV replays indicated Hossaini was behind the goal line.”
Referee Yuichi Nishimura and his assistants waved away the loud claims from the home side, which insisted the ball had touched the goal line.
But the Uzbeks had only themselves to blame for not taking the lead earlier after missing several chances. Uzbeki striker Alexander Geynrikh was the worst offender, twice failing to convert when clean through the Iranian defense in the first half. Iranian goalkeeper Mehdi Rahmati blocked both attempts on his own.
Rahmati’s best save, however, came in the 23rd minute when he strongly blocked Victor Karpenko’s powerful left-foot drive from eight meters out.
The star of the match was clearly Rahmati, who sometimes seemed to be the sole Iranian on the field who had come prepared to play. And he was good.
Uzbekistan had the misfortune of missing five players, including Asian player-of-the-year Server Djeparov. All had been suspended after FIFA found them guilty of deliberately comitting fouls to be hit with yellow cards in the previous stage in order to avoid carrying over bans into this fourth round.
The 10 teams are divided into two groups of five each. The teams in each group with play each other in a pair of home and away matches. At the completion, the top two teams in each group will go to the finals in Brazil.
The third-placed team in each group will play each other in a home and away pairing. The winner of that pair will play a team from Latin America in home and away games to decide which gets to go to the finals in Brazil. Thus Asia will send at least four teams and possibly five. Iran has twice become that fifth-placed Asian team, once beating its non-Asian opponent to go to the finals and once being eliminated by its non-Asian opponent.
Here are the two groups:
Group A
Iran
South Korea
Lebanon
Qatar
Uzbekistan
Group B
Japan
Australia
Iraq
Jordan
Oman
The betting money is on the first two teams listed above in each group to go to the finals.
Here are the results of the four games played Sunday to start off this final round. The home team is listed first.
Group A
Uzbekistan 0, Iran 1
Lebanon 0, Qatar 1
Group B
Japan 3, Oman 0
Jordan 1, Iraq 1 (tie)
This final Asian elimination round has a schedule with games clustered over the next year. In each group, six games are being played this month. (Iran will play Qatar in Tehran June 12 and the Iran Times will publish the standings after that match.) No more games will be played until the fall when six more will be clustered from September to November. Another two matches (not including Iran) will be played in March 2013, and the final six matches will be clustered in June 2013.