March 25, 2022
But the loss didn’t change the fact that Iran will go to the World Cup finals in Qatar next winter. The top two teams in each group go to the finals and Iran and South Korea had already booked those slots from Group A. The only issue of the game was who would be in first place and who in second. The other four teams in Group A trailed so badly they had no chance of catching up.
Iran was in first place going into the match, with South Korea trailing by two points. South Korea’s win, and the three points that go with it, put the Koreans in first place by a solitary point.
Five days later, the two teams played their final games of the long series of Asian elimination matches. Both won, leaving South Korea in first and Iran in second place. Iran defeated Lebanon in Tehran by a ?-? score, while South Korea prevailed over the United Arab Emirates in Dubai by ?-?.
Iran faced a major challenge going into the final two matches. Three players, Mehdi Taremi, Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Saman Ghoddos—all tested positive for Covid-19 and could not participate in either match. Taremi was the player who scored both goals in Iran’s pair of 1-0 wins in January over Iraq and the UAE. And Jahanbakhsh set up both of those goals.
The overall strength of the Iranian team was seen in how many of its athletes play professionally in Europe. Historically, most players on the national team have come from the Tehran clubs, Esteghlal and Persepolis. But of the 26 men Skocic picked for the final two matches, 12 play professionally in Europe, three with other foreign teams and only four each came from Esteghlal and Persepolis and the remaining three from other Iranian clubs.
South Korea and Iran have now met 31 times, with Iran winning 13 games, South Korea 11 times and the other seven meetings ending in draws. The last time they met was in the first leg of these third round World Cup qualifiers in Asia, where they drew 1-1 in Tehran. Thus, Skocic’s only loss and only tie as national coach have been against South Korea.
The Seoul match saw a sellout crowd of 64,375 fans enjoy South Korea’s victory.
With vocal cheering prohibited as a coronavirus measure and a mask mandate in place, the stadium played some canned crowed chants throughout the match.
Korean Captain Son Heung-min came through with the match’s first goal in the first-half injury time, and center back Kim Young-gwon locked down the victory with his 63rd-minute goal. Son had scored Korea’s one goal in the team’s meeting in Tehran last October.
Iran won the final game of this 10-game third Asian elimination round with so-and so scoring in the xxth minute against Lebanon, which has only managed to win a single match in the series.
There was more competition over in Group B, where Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia all entered the final two matches with a chance to win one of the two Group B slots in the finals. The winners were Saudi Arabi and Japan, with Australia ending up in third place.
The UAE, as third-place finisher in Group A, and Australia as third-place finisher in Group B, will now face each other in a pair of home-and-away games. The winner will then meet the fourth placed team from the North American region in a home-and-away pair. The winner of that pair will go to the World Cup finals. Asia will thus send at least four and possibly five teams to the 32-team finals to be played in Qatar next winter.
For Iran, next winter will see its sixth appearance in the World Cup finals. In 15 games in the finals, Iran has only won a single game—against the United States in 1998. The finals begin with a group stage competition. Iran has never advanced beyond the group stage, so the challenge coming up for Iran is to advance for the first time. Iran will learn who it will face in the group stage at a drawing to be held April 1.
Skocic will prepare for the World Cup finals with an astounding record of 15 wins, one draw and one loss as coach of Iran’s national team since March 2020.
An off-the-field issue for Iran continues to be the presence of women fans at soccer matches. Iran continues to try to dodge the issue—and avoid being penalized by FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, which is more and more loudly demanding that Iran end its ban on women attending. The ban is imposed because a large proportion of the country’s leading clerics believe it is improper for women to attend men’s soccer matches.
For the game against Lebanon March 29, Iran dodged the issue by saying Covid-19 mandated that the game be played in an empty stadium. This contrasted with the January match against Iraq in Tehran, when the Football Federation of Iran limited the stands to 10,000 fans (out of 78,000 seats), with 2,000 women admitted to a segregated section of the stadium. That arrangement did not elicit much vocal opposition from the clergy.