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Draw for 2019 World Cup qualification looks like they separated Asia into West and East zones and the west zone is much easier. this is a bit disapponiting, with 7+1 slots available for Asia/Pacific, we would qualify anyway but I would like to see teams like Australia, New Zealand, China or Korea playing in Tehran . right now we got Qatar, Kazakhstan and Iraq in 1st round not interesting at all.

Bronze medal I think that was their best game in the whole tournament against a very strong team, our guys missed A LOT of chances in 3rd period, the gap could be bigger. this is only our 2nd medal in FIFA competitions (after Futsal bronze last year) btw that was also the first ever medal for the Asian teams. hard luck for Italy,

this is really shame, I always hate it when athletes switch countries to win medals for somewhere else than their homeland. that guy Haithem is talented too. remember him had a close match with our legendary Sourian in his prime days. with how things work in USA, they will surely give him chance to represent the USA in international competitions

the rules from 2005 to 2012 were much less dependent on the refs but unfortunately they were depended a lot on luck and ball draw. those rules were bad but fair at least. the current rules (with par-terre of course) are much better but only and only if the officiating is fair which is not nowadays. even with those rules we still had something like Minguzzi-Abrahamian match and much more. this is easy. they have to fight corruption but they don't. not sure if you watched the Olympic freestyle matches on the last day. the officiating was shameful, they had to act and banned some high degree referees just to calm everybody.

that's why Judo is more popular despite being more boring. mostly because rules are much clear in Judo. I'm no expert in Judo but I know the penalties very well, they are easy to understand. but in Greco-Roman I have hard time to understand the cuations despite following wrestling very closely for years. sometimes they give cautions to your opponent if you push more, sometimes they cautuon the wrestler with head down, there is no consistency. it mostly depends on the name of the countries. if you watch a whole tournament you rarely see they penalize the Russian in close matches, or the host nation. the system is corrupt and the rules are good for those corrupt refs to do whatever they want.

well, I wonder what people in Egypt feel about this ! Tarek Abdelsalam just won the gold medal for Bulgaria. he was already a good wrestler but apprently training in Bulgaria made him much better, he wrestled for Egypt less than 2 years ago in Worlds 2015 I wonder how come they let him switch the country this soon !!

They are going to change Greco rules once again in their next board meet during the world champs later this year and most probably bringing back the forced par terre again. the results of this change (removing forced par terre) were disastrous in 2016 Worlds (for non-Olympic weights) I understand what was their reason for such change but it doesn't work. with having the par-terre some wrestlers wouldn't attack much and waiting for their chance to score on top but this rule is more stupid. specially in close matches where none of the wrestlers can score in standing position. deciding the matches on par-terre is much more better than deciding them by just cautions ! Greco-Roman wrestling is boring , as simple as that, as boring as Judo. but why such extremely boring sport like Judo is much bigger in media ? that's because IJF is doing a great job presenting the sport. that's what UWW/FILA never did before. btw note that Azerbaijan didn't bring A team here, they are saving their bests for the Islamic Games in Baku.

Hosseini is great GK overall, not only in penalties , he is probably Iran's best player (alongside Ahmadzadeh) he saved few shots during the match as well. and had some magical saves in extra time against Switzerland. he is a bit injured here that's why they use the reserve GK (Behzadpour) for half of the match, even though today Hosseini played the whole match, still they used Behzadpour for taking the last penalty which he missed.

Iran missed 4 penalties in a row in shoot-out. the first one was enough to send them to the final but Akbari missed that, from then our GK Hosseini saved us twice but couldn't save the 6th penalty. he also saved a penalty during the match, making it 4 saves out of 7. considering the fact Iran was leading 1-0 for most of the match that was really heartbreaking. btw choosing the reserve GK (who didn't play a single minute) for taking the decisive penalty was a dumb mistake but that happens.

thanks, I hope Italy complete the semifinal I guess Iran deserved it overall but to be honest they were hopeless in 3rd period before that last goal came from nowhere. once again like Italy match Iran had a perfect start but fell apart somewhere in the match, except this time the falling happened in 2nd period and there was still time for a comeback. and actually that loss to Italy turned out to be a good thing now they can avoid Brazil in semifinal.

first ever semifinal for Iran Switzerland almost had it but Iran scored the equalizer in the very last minute before scoring the winner in extra time.

what a match 61kg final, Khinch once again proved himself and Chakaev lol, he always gasses in last 2 minutes, for beating him you have to keep the score close early in the match. no gold for Russia today I wonder if Khinch cuts for 57kg for the World Championship later this year or stays here, after all we are 3 year away from the Olympics and beside that UWW is going to change the whole weights for the 2018.

I wonder if Edisherashvili improved A LOT in past couple of months or the level wasn't high here ! he was weak/average back in World Cup in Iran in February. as for the Russian representative, Uguev didn't impress me.

You might not I'm 33 too

cave ? actually my choice of music from a live concert was intentional. I had two songs in my mind, I liked them both equally, I picked this one only because of the video. this is the other one btw this specific singer never makes proper video clips for his work , so a live concert is the next best thing.

from what I see, with the exception of Russia the rest are sending their A team, few retired after the Olympics which is normal but in general the level is quite good. Russia is sending Yargyin tournament winners here, some of their top guys like Sadullaev took rest after the olympics, their team is still very good but not stellar as it used to be.

I see that was quite a loss for you. that was logical bet, Beigi was clear favorite in Rio but after beating his archrival and former compatriot in quarterfinal, our taekwondo federation president called him and his coach traitor, don't want to go more into details and apparently those conversations had negative affects on him few minutes later in the semifinal, that was stupid since his loss also eliminated Iran's chance for at least a bronze medal. personally I'm not into betting or even prediction contests . because I prefer to enjoy the competition. I mean I knew Beigi is the clear favorite against our guy (or anybody else) but that was hard to bet/predict against our own athlete. btw since Iranian athletes usually don't stay on top for so many years, I expect Beigi to start getting weaker soon hopefully.

by looking at the men's results, we sent almost all of our world team candidates here as a kind of trial for them. they won all lower 4 weights gold medals ! beside that only Mardani came back with a bronze in super heavyweight. I guess most of our "veterans" like Asbaghi, Hajji-Z and Mardani have to say goodbye and just retire. this is time for the new generation. some of them like Yaghoubi and Hadipour are really fun to watch. After the notorious "Olympic disaster" Iran men's taekwondo program went trough turmoil and they changed the whole thing. Khodabakhshi lost here and I don't think he can be the same "Champion" again. Ashourzadeh after losing to Morocco at the Olympics came back to the competition once again but had to withdraw because of Israel draw ! the same Israeli guy we were afraid to meet him in Rio ! he is still very young to be considered done but it will be a mammoth task for him to comeback after what happened in Rio, he went from being a hero to zero in just one second of carelessness. beside that Milad Beigi continued his impressive run, if I'm not wrong in past 2 years he lost only and only one match (Olympic semifinal), the was exactly the only single match I wanted him to win to keep our athlete alive for the bronze medal repechage.

Less than two months before the World Championships, Greece hosted the president Cup, Euro G2 tournament which is probably the toughest tournament in the world because of the huge number of participants. I think only Korea was missing ! here is the list of medalists Men 54kg 1. Hadipour, Armin 2. Magomedov, Gashim 3. Haider, Hassan Abibilla, Azamat 58kg 1. Kazemi, Mohammad 2. Uscov, Serghei 3. Simitsis, Georgios Artamonov, Mikhail 63kg 1. Hosseini, Mirhashem 2. Sinden, Bradly 3. Brecic, Lovre Achab, Jaouad 68kg 1. Yaghoubi, Abolfazl 2. Perez Polo, Javier 3. Bahrami, Sina Ketbi, Si Mohamed 74kg 1. Khramtcov, Maksim 2. Kanaet, Toni 3. Fejzic, Damir Rafalovich, Nikita 80kg 1. Beigi, Milad 2. Sari, Yunus 3. Asp, John Cook, Aaron 87kg 1. Larin, Vladislav 2. Ros Gàmez, Daniel 3. Bachmann, Alexander Yuksel, Serdar +87kg 1. Aiukaev, Rafail 2. Isaev, Radik 3. Mardani, Sajjad Shelest, Mykhailo Women 46kg 1. Yildirim, Rukiye 2. Romoldanova, Iryna 3. Kouttouki, Kyriaki Akalin, Ruhat 49kg 1. Palmer Soler, Blanca 2. Eardley, Courtney 3. Sakhautdinova, Regina Anokhina, Anastasiia 53kg 1. Kudashova, Tatiana 2. Bogdanovic, Tijana 3. Dosucukur, Zehra Tarvida, Inese 57kg 1. Jones, Jade 2. Kim, Ekaterina 3. Eris, Yaprak Ilgun, Hatice Kubra 62kg 1. Calvo Gomez, Marta 2. Yaman, Irem 3. Sogut, Seyma Nur Turutina, Yulia 67kg 1. Williams, Lauren 2. Johansson, Elin 3. Tatar, Nur Azizova, Farida 73kg 1. Castro Burgos, Cecilia 2. Zhdanova, Karina 3. Cansel, Deniz Bulut, Sude +73kg 1. Walkden, Bianca 2. Kowalczuk, Aleksandra 3. Graffe, Anne-Caroline Simon Alamo, Rosanna

Guys, there is a problem here ! I didn't give points to Slovenia, that was Moldova in my vote. here I just copy/pasted the template made by uk12points, I know such things happen, hard to manage the whole thing single handedly, of course this is more my fault, had to double check it with my original vote.

wow 4th place ! and just 1 point away from the podium. have to say I didn't expect that at all. actually I would be happy with just not finishing last to me that was a very good music but I didn't expect non-Persian speakers to vote for that. I was somehow following the thread in evening, was kind of busy to write anything myself but that was fun, thanks everybody who voted for Iran

What a pity, losing a 3-1 lead in the last period was painful. that last goal was crucial to lose 5-4, at least with this they almost can keep their faith in their hands.

Actually they will, there is no limit on that, I know from a fact that there will be Iranians in Azerbaijan delegation.

Actually no, this is not about religion, I remember even Iran sent some christian athletes to the 1st edition in Saudi Arabia, there is an organization called "Organization of Islamic Cooperation" all members of that can participate here and they can send whoever they want. once again I'm not a big fan of this event but since this exists and some of our sports federations take it serious, I prefer to enjoy it as I always enjoy all multi-sports events around the world