MHSN

only Abedini left for Round of 16 and it will be very hard for him vs Ibragimov. with Szilagyi and Homer out, it was like a dream draw for Pakdaman but he lost it in first round. he is not doing good recently. Rahbari had a good start but then once against he froze at some point in the match against Curatoli giving up 9 points in a row. Fotouhi also lost a 13-11 lead to Anstett. I know they are more focused on the team event, where they most probably will face China in Round of 16 which is something like a direct Olympic qualification match. but still the individual results also matter a lot. both Abedini and Pakdaman are now out of top 16 in the World.

yeah I know but the word Persia is confusing, as it confused some of you guys here already Persia/Persian is the name for the country, the race and the language !!! but ironically the word "Persian" is not Persian . it's English and it probably comes from "Parsi" which is the old version of Farsi. we call the language "Farsi" and the race as just "Fars" and as I said the name Persia for the country is a bit problematic. other races here don't prefer to use that word for the whole country. for example when they picked the slogan "Princes of Persia" for our football NT for one of the World Cups (2014 if I'm not wrong), some people here didn't like it AT ALL. PS: by using an example from previous World Cups I just tried to make it a bit on-topic

Iran and it was always Iran (and not Persia) the official name was always Iran while in other countries they enjoyed to use "Persia" before 1935, at the time the Iranian government asked all countries to use Iran because Persia was actually wrong. Persian is a race and it's not all people in this country are Persian. btw, you may find it interesting that we call your country "Lahestan" !!

Farsi = Persian . this is amazing people don't know that. Farsi is the Persian word for "Persian" in Iran ! we don't use the word Persian or Persia in Iran, in Kabul they call it something else but it's exactly the same. there are other languages in Afghanistan too. same as Iran, half of Iran population speak a second language (Turkish/Azeri, Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen, etc) of course there are small differences, some common words in Iran are different in Afghanistan. (and Tajikistan, they also speak Persian)

oh no way, the situation is even worse (comparing to few years ago) these days. this probably got boring for western media to report about Afghanistan but since we share the same language, whenever I listen the news there is always one explosion in Afghanistan per day among them. specially right now in middle of these "so called" negotiations. (even though I don't know how you can make a deal with them, they will never give up an inch about what they believe) and remember football was somehow banned in Afghanistan in Taliban era, they don't like such things. an international football match in Afghanistan is a potential target for them. btw looks like they are not happy with having their matches in Iran, they can have packed stadium here (even 100,000 big Azadi stadium was packed once for U23 match !!!) but it seems they are not happy with their financial agreement with Iranian football federation last time. they wanted Qatar but now they can't because Qatar is in the same group with them.

as far as I know the current Yemen NT is founded by the Saudis. (hard to believe I know) of course some players probably "don't like" Saudi Arabia but it's not like they will boycott the match. the last time Syria played its home matches in Malaysia. so maybe they even play their home matches in East Asia again. obviously Yemen and Afghanistan also can't "host" their matches. but Iraq will host its WCQ matches after a while. I think the last time was in 2002. and from what I heard we have to play Iraq in Basra , not a really good choice. hope they take the security very seriously.

I think Group E anf F are the easiest, Group A is also easy, it will be between Syria and China. if we consider AFC teams in 2018 WC as the main contender here I think only Iran and maybe Saudi Arabia are in a bit of danger in the first round. Saudi Arabia and Palestine in the same group will cause problems. Saudi nationals can't/don't travel to Palestine, they will probably force FIFA/AFC to play Palestine's home match somewhere else. assuming Qatar winning group E, we will have 5 runner-ups in the second round, I think group G won't be one of them. those SEA teams will take points from each other. Group H is also balanced after South Korea. will be hard for runner-up from that group to qualify. hard to pick the last one, but I guess it will be either C or D. maybe B. so here is my prediction : A: B: C: D: E: F: G: H:

per previous tournaments, it will be the 5th best runner-up. this is the method AFC used in its previous tournaments. of course it will be better to see the official document about it but I'm 90% sure about what I said.

we got "lucky" once again in the draw. we got Iraq (the best team in pot 2) and Bahrain (best team in pot 3), only Hong Kong and Cambodia are easy. we could get Kuwait for example. Iraq is always the toughest opponent for Iran , they play against Iran like their lives are depend on that. and Bahrain !? our worst football memory came from Bahrain.and the last time we played in Manama it was hostile situation and we only survived by a last minute goal . our new coach will be tested very soon , this first round won't be easy for Iran. have to be careful.

you should read posts above about how this Korean team is formed , they are not waterpolo players and they are only here as host. and Pakistan don't have a women's water polo team (I wonder if they even have a men's team)

we will have the AFC draw for 2nd Round of qualification in two hours

oh thanks a lot. I was going to change my tomorrow plans to watch that. you just saved my day I forgot World Championships follow a different program comparing to the World Cups.

I hope one of these Iranian guys do something tomorrow. they are all in the main draw but facing tough opponents mostly in 2nd round. based on the draw Abedini's chance looks better.

Tabriz is a city lol yes. that team was Petrochimi Tabriz, for whatever reason they translated their name in English to "Tabriz Petrochemical" yeah they used to have all of remaining good cyclists in Asia (outside of Kazakh cyclists in UCI Pro tour) and Asia tour was piece of cake for them.

the Iranian cycling was dead for a long time. there used to be several tours each year in Iran. I think there is none now. we used to have several Iranian continental teams in Asia tour. how many left ? none. I don't even follow Cycling news that much anymore. no need to say Sohrabi claims he is innocent, (never had anybody here accepting his guilt in doping cases) he hold a press conference brought million pages of "evidences" to prove his case. but his career is pretty much done, even without this doping story he was done anyway.

yeah I was expecting more but the quality and also the quantity isn't impressive at all. I guess most big countries are busy with their own trial system and those "already selected" athletes are focusing on the main tournament. beside that we had European Games few days ago. after all those ranking points is not THAT important. the only good thing in being top 4 is you most probably will get a bye in first round. no more. there are so many unseeded great wrestlers much better than top seeds. as for Iran, we have a small team here. only 79kg here is our main guy.

I didn't know Algeria won the trophy just once ! with having African Cup every two years and Algeria being traditionally a strong team in Africa, it's actually a bad result ! maybe this is their chance after surviving Ivory Coast . I like teams playing with such passion

3rd gold for Iran in Taekwondo, this time Amir Mohammad Bakhshi, so far 3 out of 4 won the gold. not surprising this is our national team here I expect at least one more tomorrow in the last day. also one bronze on the women's side made it 14 medals for Iran only in 2 sports.

this is unfair and extremely stupid . I already feel sorry for 7th CONCACAF team in the World Ranking.

another gold in taekwondo, for Armin Hadipour (his 3rd Universiade gold !!) the final was very intense , the Mongolian scored lots of turning kicks and made it close. also important 20pts for him in the Olympic ranking. interesting thing here that we have only 6 weights in the program !!! no 54kg and no +87kg?! I can't see any special reason for that ! instead we have mixed pair poomsae and team Kyorugi event for both genders !?

on behalf of other users here (yeah I gave myself that permission ) I want to thank @hckosice for his hard work here. I usually check all results in all sports in multi sport events like this but since this website is TERRIBLE, I gave up doing that and only check the results involving Iranian athletes. this is good to see medalists name here and a direct link to the results without torturing yourself and checking that terrible website.

Mirhashem Hosseini destroyed everybody on his way to the gold medal. this is his second major gold medal after missing the World Championship in UK because of visa denial . 20 more points for him. still he needs to win 2-3 more G2/G4 tournaments to make up for that. and put himself in qualification position. but this is not impossible anymore. we had two more competitors today. Barkhordari lost to TPE in golden round, how come this guy is our #1 !? on the women's side Zahra Sheidaei had a decent tournament lost only by 1point in QF to the eventual gold medalist from South Korea.

Iran won 3 more bronze medals in Poomsae. which means Iran won "bronze medal" in all 5 poomsae events bronze is traditionally our color in poomsae but we never had a clean sweep before and 3 of them finished "4th" and still received the bronze medal thanks for that stupid rule. I guess I can't complain at all about the rule on another note, Iran won two "mixed" medals today. Iran and mixed events usually don't fit together but looks like the sky is falling (just kidding, Iran participate in mixed events in sports like shooting and archery when there is no physical contact between the competitors, and in poomsae you can set your routine in a way to avoid contact)

another gold medal for Iran in shooting ! in mixed air rifle. this one wasn't completely unexpected but still.

Poomsae was always like this. even in their PDF results or TV graphics they show the 4th place as just "4th" . only people who watched Poomsae before know about this stupid rule they are trying everything to make poomsae "interesting" (probably stupidly thinking about adding it into the Olympics). they used a weird knockout system for the Asian Games. with both athletes performing at the same time together , it was funny to watch . here they came back to the old scoring system but per new rules we have "new poomsae" which is mixed with some Gymnastics elements. (floor exercise) but still I had hard time to understand how the hell they are giving points. for example someone lost his balance twice and still walked away with the silver medal ! btw the Indonesian girl who won the gold in Jakarta Asian Games and "surprised" everybody just finished 7th here, it shows you are guaranteed a win in Poomsae if your country's president is in the stadium . no matter how you perform