They may have made errors for all three goals but Iran were absolutely ruthless in punishing them, which is something that cannot be said for pretty much any other team in this Asian Cup. I’m so jealous Iran have a striker like Azmoun, as well. Seems to have pretty much everything in his game to succeed as a forward. Also capable of producing something special like he did in the last Asian Cup.
Korea a goal down - looks like they’re about to head out.
I hope Japan wipe the floor with these other countries.
It would be nice to see Japan take down West Asia but considering how strong Iran are looking, I don’t see Japan making the final. On current form, its Iran’s to lose.
Good to see Japan get up fairly convincingly. Also fucking LOL at Japan’s first goal, play the whistle you muppets.
I didn’t watch the game on Monday night but from what I can piece together from a couple of poorly written media reports it seems like Chris Beath might have brought a touch of the A-League to the Asian Cup. One report said he spent “minutes in front of the VAR” before confirming his penalty decision.
Huge win for Qatar over the UAE tonight, with shoes being thrown at the Qatari players by UAE fans.
Okay not that ridiculous, managed to find the full thing with Vietnamese commentary:
There was 4 minutes between the awarding of the Japan penalty and the shot being taken. He then only played 4 minutes of injury time.
Good performance by Qatar. They are a solid chance but Japan have looked like they had an extra gear all tournament and should be hard to beat.
Classy stuff from the UAE sheeple on the back of what is essentially a made up dispute between idiot royals trying to swing their dicks on the world stage. Who throws a shoe, honestly.
Throwing shoes is a thing in the Middle East when attempting to insult someone. If you hit someone with a shoe, you are basically saying they’re even lower than your shoe / below your foot. Someone threw their shoe at George W Bush 10+ years ago over there, if I remember right.
The UAE fans seemed to fail quite miserably at hitting their targets, though. Not sure what that means over there.
They probably would have hit them if Degenek handed them the shoe.
Beath will get to have his usual “input” in the Final, having been appointed as one of the VAR assistants. I look forward to a world record number of referrals.
Anyone but Qatar. Please do everyone a favour Japan
Dominant performance from Qatar. Penalty was a bit lucky but no one can argue they weren’t the better side. Won all seven games which is a bit ridiculous - has anyone done that before?
A worthy final…and dominant team wins.
conceded 1 in 7 games,averaged a touch under 3 goals a game
no Fluke and Arnoldball has a bit of catching up to do.
Did not see Qatar winning the tournament and certainly not being as dominant as they were.
I know there will be skeptics about their win, but they seemed to have developed so much since the most recent WCQs. None of their wins this tournament seemed to be due to dubious decisions, they just seemed to be better than anybody else.
Due to the WCQ’s also serving as qualifiers for the next Asian Cup, we will want to avoid them during the qualification phase.
How does that work when they don’t have to qualify for the World Cup?
Top 23 ranked sides after the second round of qualifiers will qualify for the 2026 Asian Cup.
The 8 group winners and 4 best runners up in the second round of qualifiers will go through to the third round of world cup qualifiers.
I am only assuming that if Qatar finish among those 12 sides, that their place in the third round will go to the 5th best runners up. However, I cant see any confirmation of that online.
I remember reading a piece about Qatar’s youth system 5 or 6 years ago. I seem to remember that they were bringing in African refugees and giving them citizenship and a place in a football academy and the only thing was that they had to play for Qatar. It was tied in with their World Cup bid to ensure that they would be competitive and that is clearly paying dividends now.
Based on wiki, they only seem to have 4 players born outside Qatar. An Iraqi, Sudanese, Egyptian and a Frenchman of Algerian ancestry.
Congratulations to Qatar for a fantastic tournament and victory. To me, though, they will now have to go and prove their worth outside of West Asia. Many of the West Asian nations seem to lose a leg playing outside that region.