thepharoah

heywoodu naturalized belgian ? 
that's why he disappeared for a week 
 

Official games for AFC Asian Cup 2019 at AFC site:
 
http://www.the-afc.com/asiancup/fanzone/
 
Fantasy (my league code: B2VGRCRG) and Prediction (no leagues allowed)

Karimi turned down so many offers from Europe. he just wanted easy money in UAE. he went to Bayern only because he was under huge pressure here for being lazy and not being ambitious. he just wanted to show he can play in biggest leagues and biggest teams. he had a good start actually but got injured and never came back properly. only if Karimi had half of Daei's passion for the game or his determination ...
 
lol on that match I was on the other side oh come on, Italy hit the post twice by Gilardino and Zambrotta . Germany had few chances playing at home but Italy deserved it more.
 
btw I posted Iran 23-man squad for the Asian Cup in Iran national thread. Jahanbakhsh is in but Gholizadeh and Ezzatollahi are going to miss the tournament.

Yeah my Arabic isn't that bad Karimi was a great player and probably the best player we ever had but he also wasted his talent because of laziness and his stubborn personality.
 
bad luck ? no we are just bad at controlling emotions. we won couple of matches on penalties in 3rd place matches when there is no pressure. in those 5 matches, in two of them we were down to 10 men early in the match and I understand they couldn't go all attack but there is one thing the other 3 matches have in common which is unbelievable. in 1984, 1996 and 2007 our STUPID coaches changed the GK in 120th minute only for the penalties and that never worked. they were OK with the draw and penalties even though Iran was the better team in all of those matches and had to push more for the winning goal. one of the matches I never forgot is Italy-Germany in 2006, Lippi knew his chance will be very slim against Germans on the penalties, he replaced Camoranesi with Iaquinta and Perrotta with Del Piero in extra time. playing 4 strikers in extra time against Germany when the score is 0-0 was too risky but that's the difference between great coaches and average coward coaches.

2018 season has just gone, but 2019 is already knocking at the door...
 
ready for a "new" Karate?
 
well, even if the Olympic qualification pathway is already underway, the upcoming year will give us a completely new, revolutionary world of Karate competitions...
 
2 are the major changes that will surely impact big time the future of the sport: first, the women's Kumite bouts from now will last 3 minutes like the men's (alleluja! it was time! ); second, Kata competitions will have a totally new electronic scoring system, clearly inspired by figure skating, gymnastics and that kind of disciplines...system based only on the individual performance and not anymore on direct match-ups between the participating athletes...
not sure what to think about it...if we get a bit less unfair judging, it's more than welcome, but I don't trust sports judges in any case (it doesn't matter if they are 5 with blue and red flags in their hands or if they are 14, writing their opinion with a small number on a PC )...so, let's wait and see what's coming with this new thing...
p.s. and the competition format will also change accordingly to the new system, of course...
more details in the WKF press release, which I'm posting just below these lines...
 
'WKF competition rules amended ahead of crucial year for Karate
As Karate is getting closer and closer to making its anticipated debut in the sports programme of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the competition rules for both Kata and Kumite will see significant amendments being introduced next season. The duration of bouts in female Kumite and a modernised judging system for Kata will be among the main updates to be applied by the World Karate Federation. 
 
The new year will not only bring an event-filled season of first-class Karate; Starting January 1st, the regulations of top Karate competitions will be updated to further strengthen the appeal and relevance of Karate's main events in the build-up of the introduction of the sport in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. 
 
Following a long-time request from competitors and major stakeholders alike, the duration of Kumite bouts will be adjusted so both Male and Female encounters will have the same length.
Therefore, from January 1st, both Male and Female Kumite bouts will last three (3) minutes, thus increasing the duration of clashes of Female Kumite from two to three minutes. 
 
ELECTRONIC JUDGING SYSTEM INTRODUCED IN KATA 
 
Aiming to streamline Kata competitions, the WKF will introduce a modernised judging system for the category of choreographed movements. Accordingly, the decision-taking protocol by flags will now be replaced by a point-allocation system. 
 

 
With the new procedure, technical and athletic performances will be examined. A panel formed by seven judges will evaluate the performances, and scores will be given according to the technical and athletic presentation of the Katas. The system will automatically eliminate the two highest and two lowest scores for both criteria; the total amount of points will be calculated following a breakdown of 70% for technical performance and 30% for athletic performance. 
The evaluation for technical performance includes aspects such as stances, transitional movements, timing, “Kime” and conformance, while the athletic performance will be reviewed according to strength, speed and balance.  
All the competitors participating in a Kata event will be divided into pools of eight karatekas, with the four competitors getting the highest scores moving into the next round. Athletes with lesser points will be eliminated until only two groups of eight competitors remain. At this stage, the top three competitors from both pools will qualify for the final bouts, with the second and third-ranked karatekas from each group competing for bronze and the two top athletes clashing for gold. 
In the event that competitors obtain the same number of points, the tie should be resolved by executing an additional kata to determine which competitor goes into the next round. 
The amended judging system will be applied to both individual and team Kata competitions. In the case of the team kata events, the duration of the medal bouts will also be modified. The time limit of katas in the team categories for medal bouts will be reduced to five minutes thus aiming to further increase the dynamism and excitement of the tremendously popular category of choreographed movements by teams.'
 

now you can vote for all star game
 
 https://vote.nba.com/#/
 
dont forget Luka Dončič

Merry Christmas to all , enjoy it 

Merry Christmas to all , enjoy it 

Shocked results in the women competition at the Russian championship
1 Anna Shcherbakova 229.785 (14 years old) 
2 Alexandra Trusova 229.712 (14 years old) 
3 Alena Kostornaia 226.543 (15 years old) 
4 Stanislava Konstantinova 212.924 
5 Alina Zagitova 212.031 (Olympic champion 2018)
6 Sofia Samodurova 209.776 (Started in the Grand Prix 2018 final)
7 Evgenia Medvedeva 205.901 (Silver olympic medalist 2018).
Elizaveta Tuktamysheva didn't participate.
 
No one from top-3 can't start at the European Championship 2019 because they didn't reach 15 years old for the moment of the official start season (1 July 2018)

Can we nominate the AIBA as biggest idiots of the year?

Also, another contender for my idiot of the year vote is Ryan Lochte for posting a photo of himself that got him a 14 month doping suspension  
 
https://mobile.twitter.com/nzaccardi/status/1021441665414950912/photo/1

world title for Dalaloyan 
 
Top 3 :   Artur Dalaloyan   Xiao Ruoteng  Nikita Nagornyy

2 Russians on the podium 

Dalalolyan  

only 5th place for France 
 
Top 3 : 

Merry Christmas to all , enjoy it 

Merry Christmas to all , enjoy it 

Merry Christmas to all , enjoy it 

well hard to compare editions to each other but I can say 2000 in Lebanon and 2007 Southeast Asia were the worst. and yeah 2004 was one of the better editions.
 
yeah I remember that match can't remember why the ref changed the goal during the penalties, I remember Zico (Japan coach) protested a lot just to have a break and save his team (after missing 2 early penalties) and it worked pretty well for him. we were following Jordan team at the time closely because they just beat Iran at Azadi Stadium in 2006 World Cup qualifier few days before the Asian Cup and we had to play them right after the Asian Cup in Amman.
 
the officiating was bad in that edition as usual. I remember Iran-Oman match, where the Bahraini ref should sent off 3 of our players but he didn't notice all those actions !! (two of them slapped each other !!) but the one Iranians never forget was the semifinal . the Lebanese ref red carded Sattar Zare for no reason at the start of the 1st half and forced us to play with 10 men against the host team (China later deserved a red card but didn't happen) but of course the frame I remember from that competition was the last penalty. what the commentator said after the penalty is still very famous here. Golmohammadi tried a Penanka penalty in the last one and badly missed it. I'm still hearing his voice
 
speaking of penalties, we got eliminated in 1984 (KSA), 1996 (KSA), 2004 (CHN), 2007 (KOR) and 2015 (IRQ)  editions by penalties.   and I remember all of them (except 1984) still like it was yesterday.

this sport shouldn't be Olympic at all 100% of lifters are doped , 
replace it by boules or vovinam will be correct 
 

As of today, Jahanbakhsh is not going to miss the Cup. they are still waiting for him to recover. Azmoun is fine now he had a serious eye injury earlier but he is fine now still he is under lots of pressure. he "retired" from the NT after the World Cup because of those pressure (and because some stupid kids insulted his family in social media) later Queiroz convinced him to come back but he just made the pressure much more with that. actually I never believed his "retirement" show.
 
speaking of injured players, I can name Ali Gholizadeh who was supposed to be our secret weapon here, he had a very good season in Charleroi in Belgium, but he just got injured and early reports say he will miss the first 2 games, not a sure thing if CQ even picks him up. another one is Morteza Pouraliganji (or simply PAG) he is our main centre back, he just came back to play after long absence. another one is Saeid Ezzatollahi (the one who scored that off-side goal against Spain and gave us 4-5 seconds of extreme joy ) he was clubless for a while, joined Reading in Championship. got injured , rarely played. totally out of shape. another player is Kaveh Rezaei who just got injured right before his club's match against Dortmund in UCL and not recovered yet. I can add Ashkan Dejagah, Pejman Montazeri and Majid Hosseini to the list. they are all ready to play now but after a long absence. but in past few years under Queiroz we never had a "star" so missing few players won't affect Iran the way it affects other teams. I know foreign media made Azmoun as a "star" for Iran but he was never the most important player of our team. he is important though specially if Kaveh Rezaei doesn't make it.
 
Queiroz's contact will be expired after the AFC Cup. I think he did OK with the NT at the World Cup. we were just one goal away from the qualification in a tough group. but so many people here don't like his defensive style. (personally I'm fine with that. you have to do what you are good at, we won't play defensive against Asian teams)  but I think it's time for him to go. it's impossible to work in such situation when everybody wants your head. and Queiroz himself was indeed guilty in this.
I know Vietnam is improved a lot but still I think we will be a very bad matchup for them. I think Yemen (despite being weaker than Vietnam) will make more problems. revenge against Iraq ? yeah maybe but I'm sure most people here still blame the Australian referee "Ben Williams" for that match. we were leading 1-0 and everything was under control for another 1-0 Queiroz style win but then he sent off someone wrongly in first half and made Iran play 80 minutes with 10 men. that was an epic match, 10-man Iran came back twice in extra time made it 3-3 but again we lost on penalties as usual. our matches vs Iraq are usually tense but nothing even close to Saudi-Iran rivalries or even Iran-Korea rivalries.

IWF also announced some few more lists in their Anti-Doping news section. only two of them are notable. both from Thailand Teerapat CHOMCHUEN and Duanganksnorn CHAIDEE.
Chomchuen won a bronze medal in CJ at the World Championships. that medal will go to Rusev from Bulgaria
 
Chaidee won 2 bronze medals (CJ and total) in women's superheavyweight. both of her bronze medals will go to PRK.
 
she also won a bronze medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta. I wonder if this doping thing happened during the World Champs or before that at the AG. but I assume that happened in Ashgabat and she won't lose her AG medal.
 
Christina Iovu is also in the list because of violation of Article 2.2 she won a bronze in CJ at the Worlds
 
 

to be more precise, it will be a super-tiebreaker @ 10 points...
 
so, we have 4 different 5th set deciders in the 4 grand slam tournaments (10-pt tiebreaker at 6-6 in AUS, no tiebreaker at all at the Roland Garros, "classic" 7-pt tiebreaker at 12-12 games score in Wimbledon and the usual "classic" 7-pt tiebreaker at the "classic" 6-6 score at Flushing Meadows)...
 
I guess soon tennis fans will need a users' guide before every season starts...

El Eye  Nice one