MHSN

oh no. actually in that specific match there was a penalty for Iran in first half that referee didn't see. but I'm talking about the heroic Iran-Australia match in 1997. the whole story of that match was unbelievable. the way Iran came to that last chance (Iran had 3 chances to qualify but wasted them all in dramatic ways) against a much much better team (Australia finished 2nd in Confederations Cup only behind Brazil) and Australia deserved to score 5-6 goals only in first half. but they just relaxed after 2-0 and the miracle happened for Iran. but our first goal was clearly offside in a weird situation that nobody even noticed that during the match. that was indeed the biggest match of our football history. they still somehow celebrate that day in Iran calling it "Melbourne miracle". and still talk about that. still make documentaries about that match even after more than 20 years. (nobody talks about USA match after 1-2 years) if you watch the entire match that was nothing but a miracle for Iran. and that match changed the Iranian football which was dying at the time. and not just football but the whole sports got lots of media attention since then and you can see a jump in Iran's performance at the Olympics since 2000. that was probably the only time in my life that I saw the whole country ( I mean 100%) celebrating something together. PS: who knows maybe with VAR we could beat Argentina in 2014 but still I won't exchange that Australia match with anything else. not even winning the world cup

only for the knockout rounds. even though I'm not a big fan of VAR but that's probably necessary in AFC more than anywhere else. the whole story of AFC Asian Cup would be different if we had VAR in previous tournaments. the ref didn't call it himself. that guy behind the goal told him to do that. of course you always can justify such penalties. they call exactly the same penalty with VAR in Juventus Sampdoria match few days ago. but as far as I know the hand was right next to the body. that wasn't a penalty IMO. his hand was in natural position. PS: we football fans probably want VAR when our favorite team gets hurt by bad officiating but when I watch a match as neutral fan, I really don't like VAR to stop the match for few minutes and for example disallowing a goal after a long celebration ! and beside the biggest match of Iran football history happened with a referee mistake (in favor of Iran) . so I guess I can live without VAR

That was a cheap penalty helping UAE to at least get a point. I still think UAE will win the group.the winner of this group won't face any of top 5 AFC teams before the semifinal (of course only if they all win their groups) Bahrain is the most dangerous underrated team in Asia. everybody always underestimates them before every tournament and they sometimes surprise. we in Iran know that better than anybody else because the worst memory of our football history comes from a Bahrain match. I didn't know even a single player from this Bahrain squad but I knew they won't be easy for UAE. they just have no experience outside of Asia, they were close to the World Cup twice. and both times they were the better team and missed so many chances (against Trinidad in 2006 and NZ in 2010) and lost the World Cup spot only because of lack of international experience. UAE was far from impressive without their star Omar Abdelrahman. still you never can count the host team out. things like that penalty can always happen for the host team. specially in such a terrible organization like AFC. probably the worst in the world. if you check the schedule , in all 6 groups the two seeded teams will play the last group match ! which is stupid IMO. I think in most (not all) tournaments they decide the order of matches by draw. but here all top seeds will start with the pot 4 team in their group. then pot 3 and finally pot 2. which means we will have so many meaningless match in the last group day. or some teams may even lose intentionally to change their path in knockout round.

at first I thought maybe they made a mistake and I checked the Ski federation website . no mistake. the distance was the same (both classical) and the time result is the same as what I read in the Iran federation website we are talking about few days ago I can't remember any big weather change in that day (I might be wrong though) even though I live a bit away from that place in Tehran mountains. they only posted one or two pics from the 2nd day where the weather looks perfect .so I have no idea the only answer is probably the snow/weather condition. or maybe someone made a mistake about the distance and they had to go few more kilometers

James Harden made losing a bet today morning so I won't forgive him for that but seriously his last 3pointer in overtime was just wow. with 2 players defending him !

we had our first snow of this winter today

I tried to explode them all as fast as possible. when you go fast you usually miss one or two

Iran had some interesting results in this World Blitz/Rapid Championship. Sara Khadem-al-Sharieh won two silver medals in both Rapid and Blitz competition. I assume that's Iran's first ever medals in a FIDE senior World Championships. but the most interesting result came from 15 years old Alireza Firouzja. he was leading the competition in both events for so many rounds. even though he blew out his lead in both of them but still a 6th place finish in Rapid event in such a high level competition was great for a teenager. (where he was somthing like 170th in the ranking order before the competition !!) watched his match against the great Magnus Carlsen and he was terrible. probably too nervous facing his idol

I was checking some Asian Games results and I found something very weird and of course interesting. there is a guy from Sri Lanka who represented his country in 3 different sports in the Asian Games and by different I mean really different ! his name is Mahamadaachchi Sajeev De Silva (born 11 Dec 1991) first he participated in Rowing at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. last year he tried his chance in Cross-Country Skiing in Sapporo and this year he was participating in Archery in Jakarta ! I wonder what will be his next sport ? Judo or Modern pentathlon maybe PS: I did my homework. he is surely the same person.

I vote for satisfactory . it wasn't great but also not bad either. I had low expectations this year because of financial situation in Iran. Asian Games was the main event of the year for me. and Iran won more or less the same number as 2014 despite having much lower budget. and some favorite events being dropped out by the organizers. there were some bad results of course but in general the whole competition was OK. Iran got some great results in YOG finishing 7th in medal table !! but I guess we can't take YOG seriously. but still. World Wrestling Championship was a total disaster but Iran won 3 gold medals in Olympic events in other Olympic sports. that will be OK if we repeat that in Tokyo. no much in team sports. volleyball was disastrous and our football team couldn't pass the first round at the World Cup. even though at least they didn't ashamed us in Russia. I'm not that optimistic for 2019 which is important for the Olympic qualification . the financial situation is not getting better and most federations have to work with a budget one-third of what they had 2 years ago. beside that there are 10 federations here without a president some of them are important sports.

Karimi turned down so many offers from Europe. he just wanted easy money in UAE. he went to Bayern only because he was under huge pressure here for being lazy and not being ambitious. he just wanted to show he can play in biggest leagues and biggest teams. he had a good start actually but got injured and never came back properly. only if Karimi had half of Daei's passion for the game or his determination ... lol on that match I was on the other side oh come on, Italy hit the post twice by Gilardino and Zambrotta . Germany had few chances playing at home but Italy deserved it more. btw I posted Iran 23-man squad for the Asian Cup in Iran national thread. Jahanbakhsh is in but Gholizadeh and Ezzatollahi are going to miss the tournament.

having a round to eliminate just one athlete doesn't make sense unless they keep the scores for the 2nd round. I mean using the total score to detemine the finalists. they can also having all 5 athletes having 2 rounds. because I agree only 1 would be really a shame

I think I exactly asked for such change in Kata scoring system. having a number as the final score is much better than just a 5-0 or 4-1 which doesn't show the real difference between two competitors. the new Kata format is also interesting. what if we have less than 16 competitors ? we still should have those 1st/2nd rounds or we can go directly to the pre-final round . what about the Olympics with only 10 competitors ? 2 groups of 5 and then after one round of Kata, group winner to the final ? and finally 3 minutes competition for women. even though I still prefer 4 minutes for both gender but still this is better than only 2 minutes !!! still no extra time but positive changes in general.

Iran's final squad for 2019 AFC Asian Cup in UAE GK Alireza Beiranvand ( Persepolis) Amir Abedzadeh ( Maritimo) Payam Niazmand ( Sepahan) DF Vouria Ghafouri ( Esteghlal) Majid Hosseini ( Trabozanspor) Pejman Montazeri ( Esteghlal) Hossein Kanaanizadegan ( Machinesazi) Ramin Rezaeian ( Al-Shahania) Morteza Pouraliganji ( Eupen) Milad Mohammadi ( Akhmet Grozny) MF Ehsan Hajsafi ( Tractorsazi) Vahid Amiri ( Trabozanspor) Masoud Shojaei ( Tractorsazi) Omid Ebrahimi ( Al-Ahli) Rouzbeh Cheshmi ( Esteghlal) Ashkan Dejagah ( Tractorsazi) Ahmad Nourollahi ( Persepolis) Mehdi Torabi ( Saipa) FW Mehdi Taremi ( Al-Gharafa) Sardar Azmoun ( Rubin Kazan) Karim Ansarifard ( Nottingham Forest) Saman Ghoddos ( Amiens) Alireza Jahanbakhsh ( Brighton) Only 4 changes comparing to the World Cup squad. Ghafouri, Kanaanizadegan, Nourollahi and the reserve GK Niazmand. we are missing some injured players, two of them are key players, Ali Gholizadeh (Charleroi) and Saeid Ezzatollahi (Reading). we had high hope on Gholizadeh, I would replace anybody else in the squad with him Ezzatollahi was also important player , his replacement Ali Karimi (Esteghlal) also got injured and missed the tournament. another injured player is Kaveh Rezaei (Brugge) even though I'm not sure if he would make the final squad. Queiroz doesn't believe much in him.

Yeah my Arabic isn't that bad Karimi was a great player and probably the best player we ever had but he also wasted his talent because of laziness and his stubborn personality. bad luck ? no we are just bad at controlling emotions. we won couple of matches on penalties in 3rd place matches when there is no pressure. in those 5 matches, in two of them we were down to 10 men early in the match and I understand they couldn't go all attack but there is one thing the other 3 matches have in common which is unbelievable. in 1984, 1996 and 2007 our STUPID coaches changed the GK in 120th minute only for the penalties and that never worked. they were OK with the draw and penalties even though Iran was the better team in all of those matches and had to push more for the winning goal. one of the matches I never forgot is Italy-Germany in 2006, Lippi knew his chance will be very slim against Germans on the penalties, he replaced Camoranesi with Iaquinta and Perrotta with Del Piero in extra time. playing 4 strikers in extra time against Germany when the score is 0-0 was too risky but that's the difference between great coaches and average coward coaches.

well hard to compare editions to each other but I can say 2000 in Lebanon and 2007 Southeast Asia were the worst. and yeah 2004 was one of the better editions. yeah I remember that match can't remember why the ref changed the goal during the penalties, I remember Zico (Japan coach) protested a lot just to have a break and save his team (after missing 2 early penalties) and it worked pretty well for him. we were following Jordan team at the time closely because they just beat Iran at Azadi Stadium in 2006 World Cup qualifier few days before the Asian Cup and we had to play them right after the Asian Cup in Amman. the officiating was bad in that edition as usual. I remember Iran-Oman match, where the Bahraini ref should sent off 3 of our players but he didn't notice all those actions !! (two of them slapped each other !!) but the one Iranians never forget was the semifinal . the Lebanese ref red carded Sattar Zare for no reason at the start of the 1st half and forced us to play with 10 men against the host team (China later deserved a red card but didn't happen) but of course the frame I remember from that competition was the last penalty. what the commentator said after the penalty is still very famous here. Golmohammadi tried a Penanka penalty in the last one and badly missed it. I'm still hearing his voice speaking of penalties, we got eliminated in 1984 (KSA), 1996 (KSA), 2004 (CHN), 2007 (KOR) and 2015 (IRQ) editions by penalties. and I remember all of them (except 1984) still like it was yesterday.

As of today, Jahanbakhsh is not going to miss the Cup. they are still waiting for him to recover. Azmoun is fine now he had a serious eye injury earlier but he is fine now still he is under lots of pressure. he "retired" from the NT after the World Cup because of those pressure (and because some stupid kids insulted his family in social media) later Queiroz convinced him to come back but he just made the pressure much more with that. actually I never believed his "retirement" show. speaking of injured players, I can name Ali Gholizadeh who was supposed to be our secret weapon here, he had a very good season in Charleroi in Belgium, but he just got injured and early reports say he will miss the first 2 games, not a sure thing if CQ even picks him up. another one is Morteza Pouraliganji (or simply PAG) he is our main centre back, he just came back to play after long absence. another one is Saeid Ezzatollahi (the one who scored that off-side goal against Spain and gave us 4-5 seconds of extreme joy ) he was clubless for a while, joined Reading in Championship. got injured , rarely played. totally out of shape. another player is Kaveh Rezaei who just got injured right before his club's match against Dortmund in UCL and not recovered yet. I can add Ashkan Dejagah, Pejman Montazeri and Majid Hosseini to the list. they are all ready to play now but after a long absence. but in past few years under Queiroz we never had a "star" so missing few players won't affect Iran the way it affects other teams. I know foreign media made Azmoun as a "star" for Iran but he was never the most important player of our team. he is important though specially if Kaveh Rezaei doesn't make it. Queiroz's contact will be expired after the AFC Cup. I think he did OK with the NT at the World Cup. we were just one goal away from the qualification in a tough group. but so many people here don't like his defensive style. (personally I'm fine with that. you have to do what you are good at, we won't play defensive against Asian teams) but I think it's time for him to go. it's impossible to work in such situation when everybody wants your head. and Queiroz himself was indeed guilty in this. I know Vietnam is improved a lot but still I think we will be a very bad matchup for them. I think Yemen (despite being weaker than Vietnam) will make more problems. revenge against Iraq ? yeah maybe but I'm sure most people here still blame the Australian referee "Ben Williams" for that match. we were leading 1-0 and everything was under control for another 1-0 Queiroz style win but then he sent off someone wrongly in first half and made Iran play 80 minutes with 10 men. that was an epic match, 10-man Iran came back twice in extra time made it 3-3 but again we lost on penalties as usual. our matches vs Iraq are usually tense but nothing even close to Saudi-Iran rivalries or even Iran-Korea rivalries.

Yeah but they are stupid to accept such thing. interestingly they have a very experienced coach in Sven Goran Eriksson. even though he just took that job recently. he probably only cares about the money they are going to pay him AFC doesn't have a fixed time. UAE (ans Australia in 2015) hosted it in January only because of weather situation (the same reason for Qatar World Cup) hopefully the next AFC Cup will be in summer. beside that having this competition only 6 months after the World Cup is not a good idea at all. I didn't name Lebanon because they are not just new for us we played them several times recently. but yeah those teams will be weak but at least in this sport there are always chances for underdogs to surprise 1 or 2 teams. but of course I don't expect a surprising winner. that will be one of those top 5 teams plus UAE which I agree is very dangerous. looking at the brackets it's very important for Iran to win the group, because our group's runner-up will get Saudi Arabia in round of 16 (assuming they will win their group which won't be easy for them) KSA is the last team I want to face. not because they are very good but because of the rivalries and things usually get out of hands in Iran-KSA matches. if all big teams win their groups and no surprise happens, we will have JPN-AUS and also KOR-KSA in quarterfinals. but the situation doesn't look good for Iran, as usual our enemy is ourselves, the whole story will be boring but there is a verbal fight in past few months between Carlos Queiroz and the Croat guy Branko Ivankovic (former Iran NT coach and current coach of Persepolis the most popular club in Iran) and Ivankovic managed to put almost all Persepolis fans against the national team. also for some reasons almost the whole "football comunity" and most of the media here are against Queiroz. he is now something like "public enemy number 1" here. because of Queiroz's personality people either love him or hate him. also his recent interview saying " Undoubtedly, our dream is to reach to the final four. Defending champion Australia, Japan and South Korea will most likely qualify for the semifinals and Iran, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and China have to fight to advance to the semis as the fourth team " made it much much worse. I know as a coach he just wanted to lower the expectations but the "football community" here considered it as a huge offense to the history of our football. now everybody here thinks anything else than winning the Cup will be a disaster !! which is stupid because the last time Iran won the Cup was 43 years ago ! yeah we were close so many times. we lost so many times on penalties or by bad referee decisions but still "43 years" is a lot. beside that most of our Euro based players are injured and not in good shape. even though it seems they won't miss the competition but you know (specially based on Mo Salah's experience in Russia) that if you are still injured you can't play well no matter how good you are. but we have two not-that-hard matches at the start. we have time for them to recover fully.

IWF also announced some few more lists in their Anti-Doping news section. only two of them are notable. both from Thailand Teerapat CHOMCHUEN and Duanganksnorn CHAIDEE. Chomchuen won a bronze medal in CJ at the World Championships. that medal will go to Rusev from Bulgaria Chaidee won 2 bronze medals (CJ and total) in women's superheavyweight. both of her bronze medals will go to PRK. she also won a bronze medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta. I wonder if this doping thing happened during the World Champs or before that at the AG. but I assume that happened in Ashgabat and she won't lose her AG medal. Christina Iovu is also in the list because of violation of Article 2.2 she won a bronze in CJ at the Worlds

That's really funny but not surprising, following Philippines basketball for a while, such funny things happen for them, they will probably lose that match no matter what, if he wanted to really help he should play against China or KGZ. I think most of Philippines players didn't born there, they just found them later in other countries when they started to take football seriously. while I still think expending the tournament to 24 teams was a mistake (just not a good idea for AFC) but at least that's fun to see some new teams like Philippines, KGZ, Vietnam and Yemen.

yeah I guess so. did IOC announced the names of 2 athletes ? or it's just IWF that announces names so fast ? with these 5, we already have 29 positive tests from Weightlifting in that Olympics (including 16 medalists )!!

wow I just see that. we also have Ruslan Nurudinov in that list, he finished 4th in that Olympic thought but he will miss 2020 Olympics. but seriously that was surprising now. I thought we are done with IOC re-testing 2012 Olympics was already best ever Olympics for Iran. if Official it will make 6 gold medals. 3 of them in weightlifting ! (3 gold and 2 silver out of 6 athletes and the last one Moradi bombed out) from that list, only Hristov also won a bronze which now will go to Vietnam Torokhtiy's gold will go to Nasirshalal. Bonk of Poland will be upgraded to silver. and bronze will go to 5th placer (4th place was Nurudinov) also from Uzbekistan Efremov. Nasirshalal was an average weightlifter who just had one good day in his whole career which was the most important day too. some people are just born lucky. he wasn't even supposed to go to London. PS: I assume in couple of years. maybe more. we will hear about Nurudinov losing his 2016 Gold medal. his sadden improvement was too surprising. actually Uzbekistan was very weak in Weightlifting until 2012 but all of a sudden they became strong. looks like they took some lessons from Kazakhstan !

That makes sense his result is too good for someone new. but how come they just put two parts of his name to create a new name ? and also changed his birthdate. https://www.iwf.net/new_bw/athletes_newbw/?athlete=fares-hassouna-1998-01-01&id=13946 https://www.iwf.net/new_bw/athletes_newbw/?athlete=elbakh-fares-ibrahim-e.-h.-1998-06-04&id=13315