MHSN

Our federation just confirmed that Hajj-Z. can't compete tomorrow and will settle for bronze, at least the good news is he is fine, no health issue. but that's a shame he can't defend his title. with this I doubt we can match 3 gold medals of 2015 Worlds, both Hadipour and Hajji-Zavareh were our gold medal chances. we never had won the gold medal in 54kg (the lowest weight) Hadipour had his chance today even though Kim TH was simply better but I believe Hadipour was also tired after that hard semifinal against Thailand. while Kim had it very easy against the Italian kid. we will have 68kg tomorrow which is probably the most interesting weight in this sport. I consider Yaghoubi as our most entertaining fighter, but he has to face the face of Korean Taekwondo Lee Dae-Hoon in quarterfinal. and we have that Jordanian Olympic gold medalist in other side of the draw, he came from nowhere to win the gold in Rio in a brilliant way, now he is not new anymore and his opponents are more prepared, this is interesting to see what he wll do here.

man that looked dangerous for Hajji the whole idea of allowing punches in TKD was stupid from the start and this is the result , he was defenseless when the Egyptian guy surprisingly punched to his face. he secured the bronze after the disqualified the guy but I hope he is fine in first place, he wasn't moving at all when they carrying out of the stadium I'm also sad for Kiani, she had a great run beating Aziez and going to the quarterfinal. that was the most important match of her career and she completely messed up. she could become the second Iranian girl winning world medal in TKD. better luck next time.

As far as I know in all age group tournaments in any other sport, when call it Under XX, players are under that age for the final tournament. not the qualifiers. the easiest solution is to simply calling the tournament U23 which makes more sense but I know UEFA enjoys to be "unique" and takes weird decisions.

I feel sorry for Slovakia, Happy for Italy but I also can't blame Germany and Italy, one more goal could eliminate any of them, the last 10-15 minutes was shameful though. even though Italy had some serious chances around minute 70th. btw why this is Euro U21 ! when players are actually Under 23 !!

Tomorrow 9 am Korea time we will have Round of 128 and Round of 64 for both M74 and W49 in the 1st session session 2 starts 14pm with Round of 32, Round of 16 and Quarterfinal for both M74 and W49 and then we will have the finals from today weights M54 and W46, starting from 19pm

well when they publish the reports after the competition, they will keep those athletes and those countries in the participating athletes/countries list, They want a big big number. we have this situation mostly only at the World Championship and with African countries.

We are having new rules in Taekwondo, giving more points to body kicks and direct one point for the cautions, we have more high scoring matches as result

We had the draw two days before the competition, most of these guys from poor countries didn't even make it to South Korea, and probably few of them didn't make weight in time. WTF once changed the rules to have the draw at the same time with weight-in (same as wrestling) to avoid situations like this but apparently that change didn't last long

WTF just changed its name and logo. they are "World Taekwondo" from now on. they finally found out their name WTF was just funny meanwhile Korea and Thailand both qualified two athletes for the SF in the 1st day. no surprise as Thailand is always very good in lower weights. the biggest surprise was the Italian guy , never heard his name before. our lone representative today Armin Hadipour also made it to the semis, I predict silver medal for him, the Korea Kim TH looks very good and will have extra help at home. like previous editions we will have the finals in the next day.

http://www.worldtaekwondo.org/competition/world-taekwondo-championships/championships-2017/information/ Draw

Actually those bigger teams are happy with these changes because FIVB promised them more money with the new format. like it or not Volleyball is alive mostly with east Asian money beside that when you look at the WL ranking, I think only 2 or 3 teams deserve more here. Belgium, Slovenia and maybe the Netherlands. AUS, Japan, China and Korea were ranked 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th. so putting them in a 16-team tournament doesn't seem very wrong.

Well the Iranian Volleyball Federation published the new format teams two months ago ! 12 teams guaranteed for seven years BRA-ITA-USA-RUS-POL-ARG-SRB-FRA-CHN-JPN-GER-IRN 4 teams only for 2018 BUL-AUS-KOR-CAN

Today we had a good chance for our first ever gold medal at the Asian Championships, OK maybe not the first , I don't have old results but at least the first gold medal after a long long time but we finished with a silver and a bronze. we have a good Sabre team now but Korea is just better and they have the individual and team title in Asia in this event for a long time. today Rahbari beat two Koreans before losing to Gu Bongil in the final. out of our 4 Sabrists, they only lost to each other or the Koreans !

I wonder how they want to determine the best team of Asia as an example. imagine all Asian teams got eliminated in 1st round. if they go with points ratio that would be quite unfair. because they won't face the same level of opponents ! China as host will be seeded and will get easier opponents. Another option is having a mini tournament for the eliminated teams but that most probably won't happen.

Korea lost to Qatar ! this secured the 1st place in Group A for Iran Korea is in real danger to fail to qualfy after a long time, now even China and Qatar are still alive for a playoff place. it will be fun to make things worse for Korea by beating them next match we still remember WCQ 2010 when they came to the last match by one aim to eliminate Iran in other Group. UAE is 99% out which is not a good news for fair play ! I hope they play fair with their Saudi "brothers" Saudi needs GD and they can score a lot against UAE. Japan made the life harder by not beating Iraq in Tehran. they are still in top but their next two matches will be against Australia and Saudi Arabia !

World Cup here we come Iran qualified to the World Cup for the second time in a row, which is a first for Iran. And it has yet to concede single goal after 8 matches. I also hope we can help Uzbekistan by beating Korea in next match, even though that won't be easy , they are seeking revenge

IRN-UZB 1-0 at half time, now they only have to do their usual Job (another clean sheet ) and we will be qualified,

yes that's fair and at the same time they are awarding athletics and cycling.

Sure , I'm against any kind of mixed events, those athletes can win medal in individual events if they are good enough. and the team competition in Taekwondo is very weird, anybody fights against anybody. they couldn't separate men from women in this format. ! imagine a +80kg guy fighting against a 50kg girl !

They have only 3 solutions, cutting the lightest weight , cutting the 105kg or changing the whole program. in this case they have to erase all world records etc. I don't know what should I do if that was my decision.

Very disappointing, I don't like almost any of these changes. (maybe except one or two) poor IWF, they wanted to add one more women's weight, now they even lost a men's weight ! I wonder if they change the whole weights once again or just pick the lightest weight to cut we have a canoeist, who had a 4 years plan to win a medal in Tokyo, someone has to tell him that his C1 200m event is gone now !

well the Government (by Government I mean Rouhani, Zarif etc) is smart enough to make any threat right now , even the intelligence minister denied Saudi's involvement in this, at least for now since they have no proof yet. but IRGC published an statement claiming they will take "revenge" ! they didn't mention Saudi's name though but we know they are talking about them. probably just an empty threat but you never know.

well things are apparently getting better with Hamas new leader Ismail Haniya. which is not a good new for the Iranian people in general, meaning they will spend/waste more money to Hamas. I wouldn't say that if that money couple help the Palestinian people and their lives but we know it doesn't hlep much. mostly create more problems for them

This is a good summary but things are not black and white like this. for example Hamas is a Sunni group. and some Sunni countries like Oman and Kuwait always had good relationships with Iran. and I also don't believe all those new about Iran's influence in Yemen and Houthis, Iran is not that interested in Yemen. and about today here people remember this comment from the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman only a month ago. " We will not wait until the fight is inside Saudi Arabia and we will work so that the battle is on their side, inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia "

This is a good summary but things are not black and white like this. for example Hamas is a Sunni group. and some Sunni countries like Oman and Kuwait always had good relationships with Iran. and I also don't believe all those new about Iran's influence in Yemen and Houthis, Iran is not that interested in Yemen. and about today here people remember this comment from the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman only a month ago. " We will not wait until the fight is inside Saudi Arabia and we will work so that the battle is on their side, inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia "