MHSN

I feel bad for wanting Qatar to win this. Argentina blew up a very good chance. Qatar will finish in top 12 for sure, I don't think I like them to go further. I hope Denmark and Croatia end up in a draw

while it's hard to cheer for Qatar (aka world selection) for obvious reasons I still hope they beat Argentina but for a completely different selfish reason, that win (if happens) will secure a top 12 finish for Qatar and that will give Asia one more quota for the next WCh. if that happens I believe Croatia will be much more motivated to beat Denmark. not sure if Denmark cares much about this match. even though deep down I know even if Asia has 8 quotas, our NT will find a way to finish 9th by a last second goal that happened 4 or 5 times already

the winner will get Norway which is not much weaker than France (maybe even stronger) and then most probably Denmark in the SF. so I guess finishing 2nd in Group 1 isn't that bad. it's somehow better than winning the group

I heard something about it from the commentator during Egypt/Slovenia match, that some (two if I'm not wrong) of Slovenian players had to leave the stadium in middle of the match (at half time if I'm not wrong) for something like that !

so unless Russia makes a miracle it will be Egypt - Denmark in the QF. I was hoping for EGY/ARG QF to have at least one non-European team in the semies. (for the 3rd time ever) now it's kind of mission impossible for Egypt (yeah I know even the great Denmark can have a bad day) if Argentina (or Qatar) qualifies they will have a better chance against Sweden. (I mean comparing to Egypt's chance vs DEN)

Congrats to Egypt they are my favorite team for the single reason of having this event in middle of a pandemic ! (even though I always like non-Eruopean teams to achieve something in Handball) even though they were upset at the end for losing 2 goals lead in the last minute. but they will regret it only if Sweden and Russia end up in a draw (unlikely) I know nobody wants to play Denmark but even winning this match most probably wouldn't help Egypt topping the group. Egypt was down by 5 goals at some point in the second half but a series of stupid mistake by the Slovenians helped Egypt to come back.

Croatia couldn't simply score in the 2nd half, Argentina's defense was GREAT. Croats rarely created any chance. it wasn't like ARG GK had to save much. Croatia scored 1 at the start and I think only 2 goals in next 25 minutes !

They had some good results in Junior/Youth events recently. Porto is a good team in EHF Champions League I think it was about time for Portugal to join the "elite" level team. and while Norway can celebrate beating Portugal by just 1 goal. but still Portugal has a good chance to beat France and qualify with France. in fact Norway's fate is not in its hands anymore. France only had one great match against Norway, they struggled against Switzerland and Algeria. beating them is not mission impossible for Portugal. (Portugal eliminated France from Euro 2020)

I thought so so LEN uses the overall GD while FINA uses the next best team result as tie breaker ? I checked and back in 2017 Worlds it came to this rule between HUN and ITA, and HUN finished first in the group despite having lower GD comparing to ITA (only because they beat AUS by 1 more goal) but since that was 2017, 3 years ago, I thought maybe FINA changed its rules too. btw having different rules for the same sport suck.

actually this is not new, that was the old rule , but I just saw they used the overall GD in the recent European Champs, I don't know maybe they changed it recently

in water polo the tie breaker is only GD against the next best team of the group (France in this case) goals against SVK doesn't count

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1103173/kazakhstan-urine-swapping-charge I think everybody was sure that this Nijat Rahimov guy will get caught oneday. he came out of nowhere and lifted 4kg higher than the World record to win the gold in Rio ! big shame that IWF let Kazakhstan even participated in Rio. at the time we just learned about what they did in 2012 and 2008 but Mr Ajan decided to simply ignore that and they just banned Russia.

that was always possible in Handball, not a new rule, they can call up the reserve guys from the wide list.

well, both Spain and Croatia should consider themselves lucky, Brazil and Japan had the lead in last 15 seconds. I knew Japan is improved a lot but drawing Croatia was beyond imagination

Argentina trailing 7th team of Africa after the half time is a bit interesting I think both Croatia and Argentina will win their matches eventually though.

who is missing for other favorites ?

Henri Deglane Grand Prix of France Preliminary Entries https://unitedworldwrestling.org/article/henri-deglane-grand-prix-france-preliminary-entries the most interesting name is Mijain Lopez ! the other Cuban guy Oscar Pino is here too. I think it can be some kind of Cuban trials. to makes things more interesting Riza Kayaalp is in the list too ! there are some other big names like Petriashvili, Snyder, Dake, Taylor, Khinchegashvili, Sharifov and Gadzhiev in the list too. sounds like a decent tournament if these guys actually show up.

Doha, Qatar will host the Asian Qualification event right before the World Singles Qualifiers in March. I assume some other continents will do the same and will have their qualifiers in Doha.

giving nickname is not a common thing here. only few athletes have a nickname and I don't think any national team (in any sport) ever had a commonly used nickname. some clubs maybe but NTs nope but since 2014 (if I'm not wrong about the year) there was a Cheetah on the NT jersey (I think they removed it recently) some journalists/fans started to call the team as "Yoozpalangan" (Means The Cheetahs) but still not commonly used. so while everybody calls the Iran national football team as "Team Melli" (without football) . I don't think we can consider it a nickname

I just saw the notification without knowing what's happening here Melli means "national" . the word "team melli" some websites wrongly uses as the nickname simply means the "national team" !

I just ran into this video, IOC's top 5 Olympic upsets in the history, whoever made that video for IOC is probably American, all of those 5 upsets are related to USA. what other "big big" upsets you guys can add to the list ? obviously Esther Ledecka but they made the clip before the 2018 Winter Games

I found this, the most interesting thing about OCA is they first pick a number and then fit sports into it they wanted to have 40 sports, so Esports HAD to be part of something else, Kurash, Karate and Jujitsu also should be considered as just one sport !! why ? there are some "interesting" changes in the number of events for each sport. can someone guess what's the 8th event in Badminton ? mixed team relay ? really ?! having 6 events in Tennis is also confusing !? it was usually 7 or 5 ?! did they drop the mixed doubles ? 33 for shooting ?! did they bring back all team events ? it was 44 with all team events and 20 without them in Jakarta. so what does 33 means ? probably "some team events" and not all of them 13 for Taekwondo ? did they drop all non-Olympic events once again to add 5 STUPID poomsae events ?! Indonesia started this by dropping non-Olympic events , they were always part of the program. Poomsae in and half Kyurugi events out is extremely stupid. Archery will have full program with 10 events, both compound and recurve. for the first time and a 5th event in Squash ? mixed doubles maybe ? I rarely see doubles playing in Squash (I know that exists) that box is already small for 2 guys. let alone 4. and despite all news about increasing events of Kurash, it's still just 7 which is good. I wish it was 0 sport climbing still has 6 but I don't know if it's something stupid like what we had in Jakarta (Speed, Speed relay and combined) or the normal program with all 3 main disciplines (Speed, Boulder, Lead) ?! and 12 gold medals for roller skating come on. 12 !!! ------ from 2022 Paris program, Surfing and BMX freestyle are not present here, plus Canoe Slalom Extreme

apparently China isn't really interested to host the Asian Qualifiers, Iran wrestling presidnet had a phone call with Nenad Lalovic (UWW president) today and was told that it's highly possible to have the Asian Qualifiers and the Asian Championships at the same time in Kazakhstan somewhere around April.

nobody! there were almost no major international competition for our notable athletes this year. but if someone puts a gun on my head and forces me to pick a name, I would give it to Sardar Azmoun, he was the topscorer in the Russian League this year. I know this is nothing but I can't remember any kind of achievement this year. everything was cancelled. PS: there is no official award here since some years, but even if it was, that should be based on our own calendar, not 2020. a year here starts and finishes in March. so even those few sport events before the COVID shouldn't be counted, they were all before March 2020.