MHSN

Khosonov beat an Iranian wrestler in the World U23 semifinal so I had close eyes on him since then to understand the level of our own guy. I believe that was just a lucky break for Khosonov. he finished 5th in Euro U23 few weeks ago and I believe that U23 Silver will be the best medal of his career (I might be wrong though) he knows big throws and this sometimes help you in matches when you are the underdog. you can throw the guy and pin him before he start to collect points. on other hand Kougioumtsidis caught my attention during the Olympic qualifiers where he failed to qualify but he was impressive for someone with little international experience and now with more experience he is getting better and better. he still gives up silly points sometimes which is a weakness he should work on it. (and almost cost him the Euro gold yesterday ) but I won't be surprised if he medals this year at the World Championship. but sooner or later he has to make a decision to move up or move down to an Olympic weight. I would advise moving up to 86kg fixing a final ? hmm. that's interesting. I wonder if it was against a Russian wrestler? they are notorious for doing these kind of things . I know they did that at least few times before. I understand his situation. that's always the problem when you are active in a sport which is NOT big in your country. lots of our athletes in minor sports have these kind of problems. but not our wrestlers, this is obviously a big sport here. they are usually relatively well paid. most of them have no other job and only focus on their wrestling career. that's the only way to keep up with the Russians and Americans. I wouldn't say Pilidis can medal in 2024 (65kg is a very very tough weight) but that's not completely impossible for him. he is not that far and they should invest on him.

my favorite group and the winner of (75% chance WAL or SCO wins this play offs and I love to play each of them)

Russia won 3 gold medals despite not even being here ! we had some interesting finals. Kougioumtsidis (I have to copy/paste his name each time ) almost gave up his gold medal in last 50 seconds but somehow survived Ashirov's last attack. but I think Musukaev/Aliev was match of the day, Musukaev was always great technically, his problem was his gas tank and looks like he found a solution for that weakness. he looked scary here. looking forward for Akgul/Petriashvili final tomorrow but I have to say Geno looked much weaker here, he almost lost to Robert Baran in the SF, won the match only 2-1 only by cautions.

that was a crazy end to this fantastic night of football

Friday and teams from the same continent can't be in the same group. (only max 2 UEFA teams in one group is possible)

and will send Tunisia to pot 4 it will be something like this 1) QAT BRA BEL FRA ESP ARG POR ENG 2) DEN NED MEX USA GER CRO SUI URU 3) SEN IRN JPN MAR SRB POL KOR CAN/TUN 4) CAN/TUN ALG/CMR GHA KSA ECU and 3 playoffs winners

South Korea will lose lots of points after losing to low ranked UAE but I believe they will still stay in Pot 3. but I believe you don't want any Asian team but Qatar in your group

Poland will be in pot 3 (right ?), there will be worse teams than Poland in that pot I can name one at least

I watched both matches , the entire 210 minutes, can't remember the lasers in the 1st leg which probably means it wasn't significant. still it's bad but I never saw something like this. it was like an army well trained for this. yeah the ref should stop the penalties but we know African refs are not good in general.

In a fair world Senegal should be banned from the WC for doing this. that was unbelievable , it was like 1000 persons using laser lights during the entire 120 minutes and it clearly affected Egyptian players during the penalties.

I wouldn't put Khosonov in the same league as those 2 . Pilidis and Kougioumtsidis are in another level and between these 2 I believe Kougioumtsidis has a better chance to win World level medals in his career. his name is hard to remember, I mostly know him as the Greek guy with tough name btw in the first day 9 of 10 finalists are from former Soviet countries (or Russian representing another country) the only exception is Kougioumtsidis. well done

surprise surprise. Japan didn't beat Vietnam! Japan had something like 30 shots on goal and scored just one. Vietnam had 1 attempt and scored th same number of goal

and he is in the Senior European Champs final too. have to say he is really impressive and at least in my opinion he won't be the underdog tomorrow in the final.

I'm afraid even that won't be enough now after losing to Korea (and Japan beating Australia) Iran lost its current place in the WR to Japan by 1 point or 2. even beating Lebanon tomorrow won't take it back most probably because Japan will beat Vietnam too. I would like a ENG/USA/Iran/whoever else group I always wanted to see that Iran vs England match. two of the biggest matches in our history were against English speaking countries (Australia and USA) I like to try our chance against England this time I hope Germany gets Qatar to balance the groups. any group with Germany and one of those top teams will be brutal.

Ukraine's men's freestyle team is not participating, another reason ruining the level of the freestyle competition but the UWW commentator guy just said that UKR's women's FS and the Greco team will participate which is a good news at least. I hope they are in good shape too which is unlikely considering the tragedy in their country but still it's good to see them here.

in past couple of months all media here were calculating and considering all situations to see how we can be in Pot 2 (which will be a huge advantage in the draw) but losing to Korea killed that chance completely. even though it was a slim chance from the beginning. no way Iran could be in pot 2, if Portugal or Sweden quality. we have some kind of obsession about advancing to the knockout round but I don't think that can happen this time too. we were very close in 2018 though.

I think it's 9, I highly doubt Al Kanoussi (NED) and Alili (MKD) have Russian heritages, those names don't sound Russian at all and Atli is as Turk as Erdogan himself. but half of quality wrestlers in this event are Russians (I'm not talking about former Soviet countries, but only the Russians) , for example in 97kg 4 out of top 5 names used to wrestle for Russia. two of them even wrestled at the World Senior Championship for Russia. while the king himself is not allowed to wrestle here This is the worst European Championships I ever witnessed for obvious reasons (still looking forward to that Geno-Akgul match though) I believe the Greco competition will be a bit better. Russia is not that dominant in Greco. but what's more interesting is to see Russian wrestlers representing other countries. in this time, specially those countries who pushed and screamed for Russian athletes (even 17 years old kids) to be banned from international competitions. using Russian athletes (who mostly still train and live in Russia) and not letting the top athletes to participate even under a blank/neutral flag at the same time. disgusting

Iran picked up its first defeat in 2.5 years and after just one defeat everybody wants our Croat coach to be fired he took over when we were in deep shit after losing to Bahrain and Iraq in the 1st round (thanks to charlatan Wilmots). before this Korea defeat his record with NT in 15 matches was 14 win and 1 draw (which is great by any standards) still nobody gives him credit for these results. the credit always goes to the players. yep that Korea match was disastrous and Iran was completely hopeless but half of our key players were missing for different reasons (COVID mostly) but it's amazing how people care more about the names more than results our current coach Skocic used to coach a club in Iran division 2 and that's why everybody still making fun of him. everybody says "someone who coached in Div 2 should never coach the NT" so it's highly possible that Iran fires the coach after tomorrow match vs Lebanon and start looking for a "big name" someone terrible like Benitez or Klinsmann of course our federation is a mess with no president in charge, you can't predict anything with them. we might end up having a local coach

the qualification in CONCACAF is almost done and dusted. USA and MEX still need few more days to qualify officially but with this GD difference they are already qualified (for US it's 100%, not even 99%) and CRC also secured the playoff place against NZL (or Solomon Islands) both USA and Mexico will be in pot 2 for the draw. Canada most probably will be in pot 4 and I believe they are one of the best teams in this pot.

nobody uses the Taliban flag, except themselves. Taliban government is not recognized by anybody yet. so the old flag is still the official one for international federations. as far as I know the only sport Taliban cares about is Cricket and they let the Cricket NT played the World Cup couple months ago under the old flag. at least for now they are not insisting on using their own flag but since they are starting to do their normal Taliban things, I think that will happen eventually.

that sounded like you know who I mean the guy with the orange hair

can be 5 2 more European teams can play the playoff round which has 2 more quotas available. so max 18 European teams can play in 2026 FIFA WC

what a shitty day another World Cup without Italy. I never imagined to see this day once. and now twice. yeah Euro feels like ages ago, they simply forgot how to score recently. this team tonight couldn't score even against Papua New Guinea.

I don't think they can ever make a "deal" about these things. this is simply who they are. they believe women should only stay at home, educated women are harder to control. Taliban is still the same shit, they just got a bit smarter to say something else to the media. they might promise so many things during negotiations but in reality they didn't give up an inch. they are having their old rules back one by one.

Japan beat Australia 2-0 by two very late goals . which means Japan and Saudi Arabia are officially qualified for the World Cup Australia has to play against IRQ/UAE/LBN to qualify for the intercontinental play-off match against 5th CONMEBOL. interestingly New Zealand now has a better chance to qualify than Australia.