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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)

Hosts announced for few more of Olympic qualifiers, 3 candidates for European qualifier and also no host announced for Pan American (even though it seems that will be somewhere in USA) Africa/Oceania: El Jadida Europe: Zrenjanin or Rome or Baku Asia: Xian World Final Qualifier: Sofia I'm glad China will host the Asian qualifier, not Uzbekistan or South Korea. at least less cheating. Kazakhstan hosting the main qualifier was already enough for the sake of "fair play"

nope I think there is no other source beside national federation websites but there is another way. but you have to wait few days for that when they publish the new world ranking, this is a G2 event, you can find the names by checking the World ranking detailed scores.

cuz I don't write codes. I just pick the flag from the list. and since Ivory Coast starts with "I" I picked Ireland's flag instead. (while I should check "C" for Cote d Ivoire)

damn, I knew all country flags since I was 6. never expected such a mistake from myself

2018 World Team Championship medalists Men's 1. 2. 3. Women's 1. 2. 3. Mixed 1. 2. 3.

Saeed Reza Keikha won bronze medal in Cottbus World Cup in Germany in pommel horse, I don't know how important are these world cups. (I assume not much but this is a kind of Olympic qualifier so maybe a bit more than before) but I think this is Iran's first ever medal in a FIG World Cup (Keikha himself had won a medal in a World Challenge before) good to see he also can "win medal" instead of just inventing new elements his score 15.133 was good enough for silver in Jakarta (even though I know it's hard to compare scores from different competitions) my knowledge is limited about Gymnastics and its Olympic qualification. but how is his chance realistically to qualify for the Olympics ? I know they changed the qualification system giving more chance to individual apparatus specialists.

Semifinalists for World Team Championships tomorrow Men vs vs Women vs vs interesting to see Both Korean teams finished last in their groups losing all of their matches ! even a Z team from Korea shouldn't be that bad.

Well, looks like some countries still didn't change their policy toward Israel http://www.fencingworldwide.com/en/competition/57-2018/pools/1 the Kuwaiti guy Al-Shatti did not start because of an Israeli in his group. OK let's talk about banning Kuwait !