Vietnam to squeeze out of their group!
I feel like there’s been basically no build up to this at all.
I don’t know if I’ll bother with any games outside Australia’s until at least the knock out round.
I wonder if India has improved recently, I know their domestic league is attracting a few players the last couple of years
If they have, not significantly.
In the last 12 months, they’ve lost against Lebanon, and Malaysia. They had a good run of wins earlier in the year, but defeating Mongolia 2-0, and a late goal against Vanuatu to win 1-0 isn’t exactly a sign of a team on the up and up.
Sunil Chetri is still their main threat, but he’s on the verge of 40.
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Good stuff. So we should either win comfortably or fold the country basically. Just surprised they haven’t tried to get old mate Retre to play for them
I’ve seen more eurosnobs/morons complaining about their teams losing players from Africa and Asia than I have actual promotion for the tournaments.
Even 2019 had some of my mates wanting to go down to pub to watch, 2015 was understandable, a must.
This year, nothing - still a comedown from the World Cup or maybe just the world has gone even more to the ‘everything must be at the top’ extreme.
I think a lot of it is Qatar exhaustion. Everybody got so worked up about the World Cup, and all the Qatari bullshit, a lot of football fans when they announced it was to be held in Qatar, put it in the fuck it bucket.
Nobody (with the exception perhaps of Tim Cahill) likes Qatar. So us playing another regional tournament in the armpit corner of the Middle East is not exactly appealing to most.
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We doing the usual tournament thread + indivudal thread for Aus games or one thread?
If we want an Aus matchday thread: Asian Cup: Australia vs India 13 January
Other results overnight:
Uzbekistan 0-0 Syria
China 0-0 Tajikistan
My whole plan of throwing the last game to get second place and a better knockout path kinda relied on Uzbekistan being close enough to take top spot. Not a good start!
Japan take a lead but are now behind to Vietnam.
Ok they’ve turned it back around to 3-2 on the cusp of HT. There will be no upset tonight, children. Go to bed.
My bad. I turned it on ten seconds before 2-2.
I’m watching the highlights of Palestine v Iran and commentary cuts out just after Palestine pulls one back at half time… why do I get the feeling they brought up something about the invasion of Gaza that’s been deemed “controversial” by Paramount…
I wonder if the AFC had anything to do with that. It is probably their stream that Paramount is using.
Well, just the the mere existence of the game would suggest the existence of Palestine, which itself is considered controversial by some.
Honestly, speaking as an Iranian, I don’t know why Palestine is more controversial than Iran. Iran oppresses its own people on the regular, it has sovereignty, UN status, and a military.
We could probably move this over to the non-USA thread, but the western colonial states aren’t propping up all that oppression of the Persian people… in fact they routinely make noise about it.
That’s a terrible shot, catches the keeper out with how tame it was, and he goes down wrong on it. Loops in and it’s 1-0 Japan.
And Japan’s out as well… at the same stage as Aus.
Japan’s football needs an overhaul… 
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