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we just heard an interesting story about 1978 FIFA World Cup. this is about how much England and Scotland hate each other in football The night before Iran-Scotland match, Iranian coach had a surprising guest in his hotel room. Ron Greenwood, England NT manager at the time (England failed to qualify for that World Cup) who came to Cordoba in Argentina to help Iranian coach about the Scotland match !!! this sounds like nothing nowadays because everybody knows everybody but remember at the time Iranian coaches were living in a cave and had no clue about European teams. after 2-3 hours meeting with Greenwood Iranian coaches decided to make a change in startling lineup because Greenwood advised them to put someone "dirty" on Scotland's star Archie Gemmill. they used someone who never played as starter to stop Gemmill. and that guy didn't just stop their star but he also scored the equalizing goal for Iran in second half (which was Iran's first ever goal at the World Cup in history) Scotland was a very good team at the time they were even thinking about winning the Cup , they even beat the Netherlands (eventual runner up) after this but still got eliminated because of that draw against Iran. the whole story came to the light here because the guy who scored that goal "Iraj Danaeifard" just passed away few days ago.

I'm not 100% sure but it seems we will have Golden Score only if they are tried after 3 rounds. if I'm not wrong in case of a tie they consider that round null. they consider that Golden Score round as a separate round that's why we have lots of 2-1 results. some of them are probably 1-1 (plus golden score)

In case anybody didn't notice before they are using a new scoring system in this Grand Slam tournament. set scoring system. something like Tennis. which means each round will be counted separately and you need to win 2 rounds to win a match. something like what we had in wrestling from 2005 to 2012. which is a terrible idea. I hope they won't decide to use it in all competitions. for now this is a test but they are thinking about making it official btw. Vladislav Larin dominated the Grand Prix series in super heavyweight. probably the best Taekwondo athlete in 2018 but I see he lost in the first round here to just some random guy from China !

except Van Dijk should be sent off earlier in first half for that brutal tackle on Mertens. that was just horrifying watching that on reply . and the most disgusting part was the Liverpool fans for booing Mertens !! poor guy was lucky that didn't end his career. (and he was just a shadow of himself for the rest of the match) just because of that Liverpool will be in top of my hate list from now on. even though I like Klopp and Mo Salah a lot

is that really the reason ? of course Qatar should be fine without anybody. they have enough money to be fine no matter what that was a stupid mistake from KSA , they just created an endless crisis. what they request from Qatar is impossibly

Team bus slogans for 2019 AFC Asian Cup which will start in less than a month in UAE http://www.the-afc.com/competitions/afc-asian-cup/latest/news/team-bus-slogans-for-uae-2019-announced I don't know what does it mean for Qatar " We & the Nation of Pride are Fine " and looks like Uzbeks are less creative than everybody else in the continent "Here we are Uzbekistan"

That's the point, this new law (which already existed but they enforced it) is barring the employment of retirees in government, state or public institutions which use state funds or facilities.

time for a little update because of new rules in Iran. people who are "retired" can't work anymore in government-related jobs. and what's a government-related job ?! any kind of organization that gets financial help from the government. by this definition all sports federation in Iran will be applied to this rule. they excuted this few days and this made a chaos in the whole system. so many had to leave their jobs which means right now so many sports federations in Iran are without a president or general secretary etc. but the problem is some international federations considering it "government intervention" and they are investigating this. some "suspensions" are quite possible now. in Iran they only let the "football federation president" to keep his job mostly because they know FIFA is no joke and the guy in head of the federation found a way to stay in his position (at least for now) on a technicality. still some of his stuffs had to resign. which means AFC/FIFA still will investigate this. some people here expect us to receive "suspension letter" from FIFA in next few days right before the AFC Asian Cup. I think right now more than 10 federations are without president here. Handball, Volleyball. Judo. Rowing/Canoeing, Karate, Triathlon plus few more I can't remember now beside them I can add wrestling and Hockey to the list for different reasons. some of them just resigned earlier to not make a mess but some of them (specially volleyball guy) didn't let it go without a fight. he left it in the very last day not before informing FIVB. he was TERRIBLE in his job in 11 months of his job. we will see if FIVB takes action but even FIVB probably knows he was such a jerk and maybe they let it go. while it was a positive change in Volleyball, I can't say the same about other sports, specially Judo and Karate.

So you are a River Plate fan. congrats I would liked Boca to score a last minute equalizer by their GK, just to have more drama btw how the hell the stadium was packed ?! all these guys traveled from Argentina just to watch this ? or they are Argentinians living in Spain ?!

thanks, now that makes sense. I googled some of those names and couldn't find a thing about them , that was OK if a neighbor country like Turkey or UAE was the host but China

Only 3 medals for that "big army" ! I think the number of Iranians in this tournament was good enough to invade China we had something like 10-15 athletes in repechage but only Mehdizadeh managed to win a bronze (and maybe because he had to beat two other Iranians !) I don't think athletes can participate in such event without approval from their national federations. and my question is "how the hell our federation let these unknown athletes participate under Iran's flag" ? and looks like Karate is rich people sport here I mean nowadays considering current economical situation it's no easy to pay a trip to China on your own. Poursheib and Mehdizadeh were already famous, but I didn't know this guy Yari at all and had to google him. but I think after all this tournament is not going to help our Olympic chance. Yari is not even in the national team program (yeah maybe they change that now) Mehdizadeh was terrible recently and now he is moving up a weight I don't think he stands a chance , Derafshipour is probably our best chance for Olympic quota here in this weight (he was there too but lost to Japan) and Poursheib is only the 2nd option behind Ganjzadeh. of course it's good to have someone else in the ranking in case something happens. our federations hopes for 6 quotas in Karate (which is VERY optimistic) to me 4 will be GREAT. but the most important thing is to qualify in all 3 men's kumite weights . they all can be gold medal chances in Tokyo. I believe we can't qualify more than 2 via Ranking (75kg and +75kg) the rest has to focus on the last qualifier.

no that's not true. Wrestling, Golf and Rugby they are all core sports. they are all 100% safe for 2024. the only core sport which is not safe is Weightlifting. (and now boxing) they dropped wrestling once but then wrestling had a competition with some other sports like Squash to get its place back as a core sport.

oh well I'm no expert in this I have a laptop and a desktop computer and an external hard drive. I prefer to save things in all 3 of them (at least 2 of them) in case something happens. btw how do you live with a tablet ? I don't know how you guys can type fast with a tablet. while I'm super fast typing with my PC, but typing on a tablet is like a torture for me.

no I just have them as PDF on my computer

wow ! I thought we won't have a competitor here. instead the number of Iranians here are even bigger than the number of Chinese athletes probably and except 2-3 like Derafshipour, Mehdizadeh and Poursheib I never ever heard of their names ! how the hell they let everybody to participate under the Iran's flag ? looks like anybody who could pay the trip is there. for example at 75kg we had 9 Iranians in the draw and the Brazilian guy Figueira had to beat 3 of them on his way to the final

well. the thing is there are rumors that New Zealand will send a junior team to the middle east for last 2 games. and if China somehow do the same. then Jordan can qualify with 7-5. their PD will be better than Philippines for sure but probably not better than Japan (and maybe Iran) and we still don't know if we can gather all of our best players for the last window in Tehran. they refused to play this window. so Japan (which is improved a lot lately) beating Iran in Tehran won't be a big surprise. personally I think China will send a good team to Jordan and will beat them but that's not a sure thing. and yeah I agree with you in this. Philippines and Japan will be more "fun to watch" in the World Cup comparing to those two teams. PS: Jordan lost to Lebanon in Beirut by 1pt and they missed 2 FTs in last second by their captain. I believe they are going to regret that at the end.

Letting China play in Asian qualifiers made everybody confused about how they are going to deal with this. I think everybody was assuming wrong . FIBA wrote a confusing line in its website couple weeks ago made it more complicated but finally they made it clear here http://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2019/news/14-world-cup-spots-up-for-grabs-what-teams-have-to-do-in-final-window-to-qualify we were thinking that if China qualifies as a top 3 team then both 4th placed teams from both group will qualify. but we were wrong. they just don't China's rank in that group. they will consider China's results but not their rank !! FIBA just made a mess with this. so there is a high possibility that 5 teams from Group E qualify !!! and that 6th team is a weak Syria !! Jordan and Lebanon have very good PD because they had India and Syria in their group. I would curse FIBA right now if we didn't beat Philippines last week we really didn't know how crucial was that game. cuz we were almost sure that we will qualify at least as 4th place team in the group. we didn't send half of our main squad to Manila (including almost all of our starters) and our reserve players somehow made a huge surprise and won that game.

while I agree with you but I wonder if we have such a thing in any sport beside Football ?! I see sometimes we have that in volleyball or basketball but that's not a "rule" even at the Olympics (of course beside football)

Oh sure ! "not to offend you" but unlike what you think . basketball is one of my favorite sports. you should know these days internet and other things exist and you don't have to live in Europe or North America to watch basketball from around the world. but you also should know people have different "taste". I prefer to watch a game between Indonesia and Guam over a regular NBA game. (I only watch playoffs seriously) because that's something "new" for me. I prefer national matches in any sport in general. I don't care much about club competitions when you just can buy a whole new team next year. yeah I watch NBA sometimes or European basketball leagues when there isn't any other thing but I prefer national matches. and I like this format because at least we also can have some international matches during the year (and not just in summer) I know this is probably a unpopular opinion and I said that in start of my previous post but that's not because I can't watch so-called "quality" games. this is just what I prefer to watch. I enjoy to see when players try their everything for the countries. instead of watching NBA when nobody even cares to defend sometimes. and Slovenia no way deserved to be in the WC. their top players didn't give a shit about their NT when they had the chance in summer. and when the World Cup starts nobody will talk about Slovenia. yeah I feel sorry for Croatia, they tried with their best team. just had bad days. but this is sport. new teams also deserve to try their chances in the World Cup. and who can say Poland didn't deserve to qualify ? they beat a full squad Croatia which is huge for them. even though outside Europe. I can't see even one single surprise (which is unfortunate IMO) in other continents all bigger teams qualified (or will qualify) for the WC. (I hope Uruguay changes that at least) PS: Denmark Euro Champion in 1992 failed to qualify for World Cup 1994 and the sky didn't fall. and won't fall this time too.

I really liked and enjoyed this qualification format. during these windows I watched almost 5-6 games per day. and it seems I'm the only one supporting this qualification format and since I am the only one. let's have a summary about the competition. but first this is a bit hard to predict some games in last window. because we don't know how much other teams will take those games serious or not Africa: are already qualified. I think it's fair to say that and will join them 99%. Egypt was probably the biggest loser here. losing the crucial last game badly to Cameroon. Asia: plus the host nation are already there. 6 more Asian teams are trying for the next 4 spots. I think Kazakhstan's chance is close to zero . and Jordan needs a miracle to beat both China and NZ to qualify even though this is possible both teams send a junior team to Jordan. but in case they don't I think will qualify for the WC. Iran is closer than other 4 teams.but if Jordan wins the last two games . all 3 other teams can lose their spot. America: are already qualified . we have 4 countries for the 3 spots. Uruguay. Brazil. Dominican Rep and Puerto Rico. this one is hard to predict. but I think Brazil is almost already qualified at least as the best 4th placed team. and Dominican also needs one more win to reach that. so it will go to the last game of Puerto Rico and Uruguay. I think PR will have more chance because they will host that game. so my prediction is Europe: are already qualified. 5 more spots remaining. in group J Poland only has to beat the Netherlands at home to qualify and Italy only has to not lose badly to Hungary at home. I think will qualify from this group for sure. in group K the last spot is between Russia and Finland. and Finland has to beat France and Russia away to qualify. they have their destiny in their hands but their chance doesn't look good. so I think will qualify. in Group L Serbia only has to beat Estonia to qualify which I'm sure they will so but the only real competition for the last window in Europe is in Group I, where Ukraine, Montenegro and Latvia they all stand a realistic chance to qualify. considering everything I think will grab the last spot.

We had a great won away in the Philippines yesterday which was unexpected because we played this window without 4 of our starters and Philippines was full squad. with this we 95% qualified for the World Cup but still not 100% BUT I always know media here are extremely stupid but I can't believe even our BB federation is this stupid. they should know the rules at least ! everybody here think we are 100% qualified and this is a done deal ! they just look at the table. we are 2 wins above the Philippines and with 2 games left (and since we beat them twice and have the head to head record) they think this is a sure thing ! BUT a 3 way tie break between Iran. Japan and the Philippines is still very possible. imagine we send a weaker team for the next window (assuming we are already qualified) and then we lose badly to Japan and Australia and when FIBA updates the table we can see we are in 4th place and not qualified for the World Cup !! that's unlikely (because for that scenario Japan has to lose to Qatar) but possible . and I'm really worry about that.

thanks That's a good news for likes of Ganjzadeh, Askari, etc but also bad news for Abbasali she won the Asian Champs beating Uekusa. won't be easy for her to repeat that. Iran is not going to send a team to China. and some other tournaments. I see Ganjzadeh wrote something about that in his instagram. no money for that another question, do they count all results ? or something like Judo when they only consider 5 best results of a year

Is that a sure thing ? I'm a bit lazy to check the documents. I was going to blame our federation for not sending some of our A team members to the 2018 Asian Championship (and saving them for the Asian Games) but you are telling me that wasn't a mistake, right ?

this is quite normal in basketball. specially in Asia. I remember once Lebanon naturalized a player (former NBA player Jackson Vroman who passed away not long ago) before Vroman even enter Lebanon once in his life !

AFC announced Abdelkarim Hassan from Qatar as the AFC player of the year ! don't be surprised if you never heard of this guy. most of football fans in Asia also didn't hear his name before. this is AFC. they never fail to surprise AFC has a system to pick the best player of the year that nobody can understand. I'm thinking if AFC had to award the best player of the year. they would probably gave it to someone like Raphael Varan (and I'm not kidding at all)