MHSN

WKF announced the new ranking VERY fast right after the Paris K1 event. I was taking a look at the ranking and the following athletes are 100% qualified. I mean even mathematically. I considered the fact that 2019 European Champs results will be replaced by 2020 edition. Men's Kata Damian Quintero Ali Sofuoglu Men's 75kg Bahman Askari Men's +75kg Ugur Aktas Sajjad Ganjzadeh or Zabihollah Poursheib Women's Kata Sandra Sanchez Women's 55kg Serap Ozcelik Anzhelika Terliuga Women's 61kg Yin Xiaoyan * Viviana Bottaro and Irina Zaretska are also very very close but still mathematically possible to not qualify.

actually I think she made up 180pts, per rules when you win your first match, "bye" in the first round will be counted as a win. which means she had 3 wins and 30*6=180. but yeah just winning that QF (which she was leading 5-3 until the last seconds) was enough to probably double her points at least. considering this and the fact we have to remove 2019 Euro Champs points (which will be replaced by 2020 scores) Semeraro is actually leading the Swiss girl right now it wasn't a good event for Iran in term of general results but it wasn't that bad for Olympic qualification, Abbasali and Bahmanyar will make their situation better in new ranking, specially Abbasali if she wins the gold tomorrow. with gold medal she will be more than 1000pts above the rest at +68kg. but it was a total disaster for Alipour, not that she lost in the first round, all of her opponents made it to the medal rounds ! but still if both other girls win the quota directly, I think Alipour has a very good chance for the Asian quota.

no matter how, Uzbekistan always chokes in football. that's something you always can bet on

rumors say UWW is considering moving the Asian Olympic Qualifier from China to Qatar !

it seems Jordan will host the Asian Olympic Qualifier

yeah it seems so, but once again there is nothing in ATTU website about it, even though my source was Iran TT federation General secretary and it can't be wrong but still it doesn't make sense to give free quotas to a region with only 1 country !! even though if I'm not wrong in previous years no other South Asian countries participated to challenge India, so it seems they have no problem with 3 or 4 players from 1 country battling for that only spot ! and I think this way North Korea is also guaranteed a male player if TPE and HKG qualify too.

oh wow that's even better, Mongolia it seems if Korea and Hong Kong qualify only Macau and Mongolia are left in East Asia and since Macau is not eligible. that's free quota for Mongolia unless ATTU has a rule about not giving free quotas to regions with less than 2 countries !! I can't see anything on ATTU website about how they will determine those 6 Asian quotas but one of our guys attending ATTU meeting told the news that it will be 1 for each region + 1 quota for the best Asian players in the WR.

Slovenia narrowly beat Iran (Iran had lead in all 3 defeats) India will be huge favorite against them with Bojan Tokic not in a great shape and hopefully you qualify both teams for Tokyo (even though I know Romania will be favorite in the women's event) but there is something interesting, if India qualifies a team, we will see someone from Sri Lanka at the Olympics !

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.