MHSN

Oh my .. worst possible result. draw. and Iran had 2 goals lead until last 90 seconds. and as usual our handball never fails to fail. and for the 10000th times Iran missed the World Championships by just 1 goal, it doesn't matter how many quotas AHF has, Iran always finishes in the next place. with only 25 seconds to go and Iran being 2 players down and 1 goal up, we still had the ball and while the ref called for passive play, our stupid coach didn't use his timeout. after that timeout, they could probably kill that 25 seconds to win the match. qualified for the World Championships

So after the 2nd group day, no surprise in Group 2, Qatar is already qualified for the semifinal and WCh. the last match between Iran and Korea will determine the second team. a draw will be enough for Korea. but Iran has to win. our genius coach decided to save some of his starters today for the last match and despite that Iran led Qatar by 2goals at HT. it was too late for the coach to realize we had a chance to win. in other groups we have some surprises today, but it seems only a miracle can stop Japan and Bahrain from qualification. so it's fair say, we already know 3 of Asian teams for the 2021 WCH with the winner of match to join them on Thursday. hopefully Iran won't below this chance

well maybe, maybe not. you usually put your best double pairs together for the first match, that settles the order of rest of the matches, that's not luck just for info, per official documents, teams will name 3 players as A, B and C (and X, Y, Z for the opposite team) the order will be double BC vs YZ A vs X C vs Z A vs Y B vs X

no, it will be up to them to decide who plays first. and teams announce the order of their players without knowing the opponents order.

4 singles and 1 double and no player can play more than 2 matches , singles or doubles.

yes that's weird but that's the rules it was something like this 4 Europe 4 Asia 4 Africa 4 Pan America (3 South +1 North) 1 Host 1 defending champion 1 Wild Card 1 Oceania or Wild Card additional quotas for top 12 in previous World Champs, +9 for Europe, +2 for Africa and +1 for South America even though since Egypt qualified directly as host, I don't think they should qualify another quota for their continent, beside that Denmark also qualified directly as World Champion, they also should not qualify one more quota for Europe.

This is also a qualifier for the 2021 World Championship. top 6 + Egypt qualify. which means only one of those teams in 2nd round won't make it. Egypt, Angola, Algeria and Tunisia are already qualified (or will qualify today) DR Congo, Gabon, Morocco and Cape Verde will battle for the remaining 3 spots !

Did they change the tiebreaking criteria ? if I'm not wrong per old rules, Spain should rank higher than Hungary bcz Spain beat 3rd place team Turkey by a better goal difference. but it seems right now they consider the GD for all group matches.

main round groups 1) 2) top 2 in each group advance to the semifinal and most importantly to the 2021 World Championship but watching Iran Handball NT is still a torture. they are always close to achieve something but they never do. today after a poor start they slowly came back to the match and Iran even had the lead in middle of the 2nd half but then they simply stopped playing, I checked the highlights, Iran's last goal was scored exactly on 48th minute ! which means our guys didn't score in the last 12 minutes ! and Bahrain was one man down at least 3 times in that period of time, Iran even had a 7m throw (penalty) and still missed them all. I'm sure even Hong Kong and New Zealand could score couple of goals in 12 minutes (where Bahrain was one man down in half of them) on the positive side, it happened here and not in crucial 2nd round matches. it just made the 2nd round group a bit harder but when our (almost) B team beat Korea and Kuwait during the Olympic qualifier, our full squad A team should be able to do that again but I have a feeling they will find a way to fail, they always do.

I was in terrible mood in past few days but watching MH Mohammadian today really cheered me up. he destroyed everybody today including the Olympic Champion, World U23 Champion, European Silver medalist, World Bronze medalist and another guy who finished 5th in Worlds this year. Mohammadian destroyed all of them without giving up a single point. it seems we have a medal favorite in Tokyo at this weight finally. and I don't think Sadulaev is a sure gold medal winner anymore from what we saw today this Mohammadian isn't completely without a chance against the Russian tank. Amir Hossein Zare also won the gold but the field was much weaker at 125kg. he had one tough match against the biggest guy he will ever wrestle Bilyal Makhov ! that was a tough match, Zare won 5-3. he is just 19 and he is already beating multiple World Champions. if both Zare and Mohammadian make the Olympics team, consider we also have the great Yazdani at 86kg. all of a sudden our freestyle team is not that weak anymore !

more fun results in Kuwait 40-20 53-21 39-16 37-15 42-18 but probably we won't see scores like that any more. we already know top 8 teams and tomorrow matches are only to determine the main round groups. I wonder if all teams take those matches seriously. I assume most of them do, unless some surprising results happen early the day, make other teams to rethink about their strategy ! for example if Iran beats Bahrain, nobody wants to be in the same group as Qatar and Bahrain ! Iraq was a bit unlucky they lost two winnable matches to KUW and UAE. I think they will massacre those weak teams for the 9th place finish. with both AUS and NZL being eliminated, IHF will award a wild card, so if any European big team loses the European playoffs, there will be a wild card waiting ! and still I wonder why in Asia we have two separate qualificaiton tournaments for the Olympics and World Championships ! with Olympic qualifier being held in middle of European club competitions.

we had lots of close matches at the first day of the competition 38-11 45-16 49-18 maybe it's not a bad idea to think about Level A/B competitions in Asian handball.

actually that was early 2008 (not 2007) of course you can't switch just before the Olympics, you have to do it before the Olympic qualifiers to qualify first I still think he didn't spent more than week in Slovakia before Beijing 2008. if I'm not wrong Musulbes had retired and was coaching, he just came back for the Olympics. and who knows he most probably could win the gold if it wasn't for cheater Taymazov. that was interesting to know the connection between him and Slovakia. that was too easy and I remember Kertanti as wrestler, (and yes I know he is Russian too) also Lohyna. I think I remember one more Slovakian freestyle wrestler but can't recall the name. (had to google to remember, Stefan Fernyak)

I know but i was referring to David Musulbes, right before the 2008 Olympics he just decided to come back to the mat (and I don't know how he found Slovakia or Slovakia found him) I wonder if he even spent a month or even a week in Slovakia before winning an Olympic medal for the country ! these new guys are competing for Slovakia for a while, at least that's more understandable. even though I doubt if they live in Slovakia. I mean it's OK if someone moves to another country and after a while decides to wrestle for them. I don't like it personally but that's understandable. but what I dislike more is people representing countries they know nothing about ! and I have to mention Hungary too, they are forming a full squad of Russian wrestlers in freestyle. Musukaev already won medal and quota for them last year. and unfortunately we will see more of this in next few months, specially for ex-Soviet countries. we will see more of 2nd tier Russian wrestlers trying their chance for other countries for Tokyo.

it's still confusing for me how he is able to participate at the World Championship without the Italian passport ! you should be at least a citizen of that country when you are going to the World Championship ! btw you should learn from the Uzbeks and how open minded (aka corrupt) they are they just give citizenship in a heartbeat . former European Champion Ilyas Bekbulatov is now representing Uzbekistan, that's some bad news for Asian wrestlers at 65kg. as usual when we get close to the Olympics, we will see some 2nd tier Russian wrestlers going to countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan etc. even Slovakia and Romania won Olympic medals like that !

I watched few of Greco matches today, the level doesn't look great (unlike freestyle when we have lots of big names in the entry list) but still there were some big names. I want to make a bold prediction, I won't be surprised if this guy Andres Montano from Ecuador wins a medal in Tokyo. he is really good even though still makes dumb mistakes sometimes. even in NurSultan he lost narrowly to the eventual gold medalists Fumita (while leading him most of the match) but apparently got injured and didn't wrestle the repechage. today 97kg was better with some good wrestlers, @phelps any update on Kakhelashvili's situation ? I remember you told us only Conyedo is eligible to wrestle for Italy. Kudiamagomedov and Kakh had to wait , right ? he looked good today winning the gold medal beating some tough guys on the way, specially the Finnish kid Kuosmanen looking forward to see the freestyle competition, we have a 4-man team here, they are our coach's candidate to wrestle at the Olympic qualifiers if they perform well here. mostly interested to see the youngster Zare who was amazing last year, winning Worlds U23 (despite being just 18) and he also beat Geno Petriashvili in a league match.

You always can bet on Iran U23 team not qualifying for the Olympics. that's a sure thing if someone watches the highlights later, Iran missed 2 empty goal chances against Uzbekistan and LOTS of great chances today (including an empty goal on extra time) against China to finally got eliminated on goal difference.

not just him. I saw some other guys (even celebrities) there also trying to use Persian on tweeter ! at least I can say he is not using the google translator !! btw the new wave of protests are mostly middle class educated people, I'm sure most of them hate this idiot even more and still remember all he said few days ago. and I have to make something clear, people are very angry here not just because they shoot the plane, but mostly because of the cover up and lying for 3 days. even though looking at the bigger picture, people are just angry and anything can bring them back to the streets.

I didn't follow one single Karate PL event and they did this ! winning 5 gold and 1 bronze with only 8 athletes is quite an achievement even though it wasn't the highest level of the competition. but I still can't understand why they had to send Askari, Poursheib and Ganjzadeh halfway the world for this ?! they are very safe for the quota. no idea how coach wants to solve Ganjzadeh/Poursheib question though. maybe just sending both of them everywhere to see which one will have more points at the end ! but on the women's side, they needed all those points, Rozy Alipour and Abbasali put themselves in a better position with those gold medals.

I wanted to write about it yesterday but I wasn't just in the mood. we knew about this for few days, but she finally confirmed it with that instagram post yesterday. even though she probably broke the world record in number of surgeries ! her career is probably done already (or maybe not ?!) but still she was the biggest name in the list of athletes leaving Iran. which is getting bigger and bigger. some of them are 2nd/3rd tier athletes I didn't even mention here, but Alizadeh as the best female athlete Iran ever had is the biggest name IMO. obviously she is exaggerating but then I'm not in her place to judge. most of her points are valid though. I would liked her much more if she could say all those things without leaving her country. because when someone gets "brave" after leaving the country, to me it's hard to believe the real intentions. just 2-3 months ago she was on TV with her husband and she was talking about how happy she is about everything and blah blah.

that sounded like things you hear/read in social media from famous philosophers lol of course even in worst day I still follow sport news and that's the only thing can change my mood but still but even players didn't really celebrate much. our captain Saeid Marouf wrote something like that in his instagram. that was probably the reason they almost lost to South Korea yesterday. they started the match with a very low energy.

well, it's hard to be happy about anything these days but yayyy that was good news.

and Iran has finally admitted shooting down the plane I assume they waited few days to see if there is a way to "not accept" it but then they found out that's impossible.

obviously, but if they knew it was their own missile, they wouldn't let anybody else investigate it and try to make another story . something like Ukrainian president is a clown and US puppet and he wants to blame Iran (because US asked him to do) things like that. this is how they handle things when they are guilty, by blaming the others. I mean it's not a big mystery , if they investigate it they can find out the truth easily I'm not sure about the second part, the guy who filmed it is unknown he can't say anything ! I'm not denying that possibility at all. actually I have my own reasons to believe it. the reaction from the Iranian media was suspicious from the first moment. as you know media are not really "free" here. yes they are free for most things but when it comes to sensitives matters like this they know they can't write whatever they find out. and their silence about such important things (only publishing official statements) made me suspicious even before all this came out.

I have to reject two of your reasons 1) there was no immediate claim, no official statement from the Iranian authorities yet, they only say they are sure it wasn't a missile and they invite all other countries to investigate the accident. nothing more. this is how things work in Iran, when something happens, a guy says something about it, then another guy (totally unrelated to the case) says something else and I saw most of the time western media publish those things as official. 2) that's pretty normal, the site of accident is responsible for the investigation and Boeing is an American company, they simply don't trust Americans. 3) but this one is a valid reason. Iran was ready for an air strike at the time, they were ready to shot down anything suspicious so it's hard to believe it's just a coincidence. the place also makes sense it wasn't that far from a military base. but then Iranians sound very confident by letting everybody investigate the accident. a big group of Ukrainian experts are already there and there are other groups on their way from Canada and France. And this is also weird that a guy was randomly filming the sky at 6 in the morning in a place has no people !? and few hours out of the city