AFC OPENS INVESTIGATION INTO REPORTED REGULATION BREACHES

[nisfejahan]

They should investigate iran-syria, seemed fishy aswell.

YOU keep repeating the same BS line in every single thread. Whats fishy is your agenda!!!!!!!

[karimi_jaadogar]

Guys we were already winning and it took a last minute goal to equalise and get the draw. There is nothing suspicious about iran match, everything seemed natural. 1st goal they caught us offguard after beiro's bad deflection. If that was the case, then iran will not have even bothered in scoring 2 more goals and would have just scored an equaliser and left things go that wat but we wanted to win we went for the 2nd goal but tied in the dying minutes of the match. Nothing looks suspicious at all in the match. If they want to blame us that Iran didnt concede against any other team but did in the last match, well thats football and topscores are achieved to be broken some day and Iran's was in this particular day.

[Lorestani]

Some people here are ridiculous. Without some smoking gun saying we fixed the match, there is ZERO reasonable argument that Iran fixed that match. All these conspiracy theories are ridiculous and stupid. Out of any team we played, Syria was the most active and playing adventurous football. Did we miss our goals on purpose? We miss wide open nets every game, and rarely score 2 goals. Did we fix our other 9 matches by missing shots we could have scored?
Is it the fact that no team previously attempted to challenge our goal, while Syria did? Syria was pressing at many points during the game in Azadi. No other teams tried that. We had an unlucky game and a hungry opponent. This does not equate to match-fixing. Some want to excuse TM's poor performance defensively with some bulls**t. We tied guys. The game wasn't fixed. Who cares if Syria goes over Uzbekistan? Seriously.
If Qatar doesn't get investigated for the 2014 match against Uzbekistan where they obviously fixed, us conceding a last minute equalizer should not be either. I think some people here just want the drama, like 13 year old girls. They want a story. No story here folks, bad game. Ansari isn't TM level. We need Montazeri with PAG in WC, that's all.

Are you sure about this? There might be no evidence yet, but why would you say there are no "reasonable arguments"? Isn't it plausible to assume that IR might wanna help Syria? Isn't it plausible to assume that some players like Jahanbakhsh came out and publicy dismissed the idea that Syrians are our brothers because IR officials had tried to warm them to that idea prior to the game? Isn't it plausible to assume that one or two players are enough to manipulate such a game? I think many arguments are very plausible, but unless there is the willingless to investigate, we will never find out and go forward with the same "hala velesh kon" mentality that has served us, to put it mildly, very little.

[shahabGAOL]

It is also possible that the Saudi's done something in their food of the Japan players to not play in there top. That's what I heard to from the painful game Bahrain-Iran we lost they had done something in their food before the match we played very very bad and our enemy go throug Saudi beat 4:1 Thailand and went to World Cup 2002

[sarbaz]

Well as long as the result will end up hurting the Saudi Soosmars then i am very happy about the investigation.

[OFFSIDE_1]

They should investigate iran-syria, seemed fishy aswell.

there is NOTHING fishy about that game. We tied a very motivated Syria team. Are you hoping we get banned ?????????

[inarsenewetrust]

the only member than should be banned is the member euphory.

[Doctor DOOM]

I say let the last round be played again. At least those games that look suspicious. Like japan-saudi, iran-Syria, ... .

Yes, almost impossible. But it would be wonderful to crush the motherf**king Syrians and teach them a lesson in gratitude

[Nokhodi]

It's about a BeIn reporter who was thrown out. BeIn is owned by Qatar and they own the WCQ rights so that can't happen.

[saeed_noro]

when i read this, my first think was iran, and probably iran syria, but not japan australia saudi case.

i think it is afc own fault in case of aussies and saudis. everybody could see this coming. i said this before, this will happen again and saudis have last match at home, for this reason only i wanted iran not be grouped with saudis.

but bert van marweijk was really chilled on his seat with his coaching team, they did not stand up, no shouting, nothing, they just watched the football match, and it seemed they were sure qualify. on the other hand, the goal was not fixxed, it was a super goal, not to avoid. japanese also fought until the end, and got also cards, they wanted to score. i do not think saudis cheated, but saudis give everyhting and also planing to play very late, everything was done to reach this advantage...this is afc fault. aussies should point this out...

[Nokhodi]

Further to what I mentioned and what the investigations are actually about:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/s...s.html?mcubz=3

LONDON — One of the world’s biggest buyers of sports rights has a problem: It’s Qatari.

The broadcaster, beIN Sports, has poured billions of dollars into securing rights to major events, notably in soccer, in recent years. But over the last three months, it has become entangled in a bitter diplomatic crisis in which several Arabic-speaking countries, led by Saudi Arabia, severed relations with Qatar, the tiny gas-rich emirate that will host the 2022 World Cup.

For beIN, which is financed by the Qatari government, the fallout is starting to affect business across the Middle East and Africa, where it has millions of sports-loving subscribers. Viewers in the United Arab Emirates had their signals blocked for six weeks before the authorities there recently reinstated the channel. BeIN reporters have been harassed at stadiums, or removed from them to face stern questioning by the police. And in Saudi Arabia, vendors selling beIN Sports have been shut down, and marketing activities promoting the company are no longer allowed.

“There are so many different levels to this issue,” Sophie Jordan, the general counsel of the broadcaster’s parent company, beIN Media Group, said on Thursday. “This is unprecedented.”

On the ground, beIN staff members (the network has about 5,000 employees worldwide and operates in 43 countries, including the United States) have reported being prevented from doing their jobs. Production crews have been barred from entering countries supporting the boycott — meaning beIN has been unable to fulfill its role as a so-called global host broadcaster for the Asian confederation games in the Middle East — and reporters have been shunned by players and coaches from rival nations.

More recently, the obstacles have become so contentious that a sports rights agency, Lagardère Sports, was forced to step in to ensure crucial World Cup qualification games and Asian Champions League matches could be broadcast in countries in which beIN owns their rights.

Continue reading the main story
“Every single obstacle to prevent the commercialization of beIN channels has been put in place by the Saudi authorities,” Jordan said.

Photo

Saudi Arabia’s Nawaf al-Abid, right, with Japan’s Hotaru Yamaguchi during a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday. BeIN owned the rights to the game, but it could not get members of its production staff into Saudi Arabia to broadcast it, and then had one of its reporters ejected from the stadium before kickoff. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The sports dispute is collateral damage in a broader political feud. In June, a group of Qatar’s Arab rivals — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain — severed all ties with Qatar, accusing its rulers of destabilizing the region and supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations, but its neighbors issued a list of demands that Qatar, one of the world’s largest suppliers of natural gas, must accede to before relations can be normalized. Among these was the closure of the pan-Arab news network Al Jazeera, which, like beIN Sports, is bankrolled by Qatar’s government.

“The demands are so big that it’s politically impossible for Qatar to accept them,” said Jane Kinninmont, the deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the international-affairs think tank Chatham House.

But live sporting events, especially soccer matches, form the lifeline of beIN’s business, and they are where some expensive confrontations are taking place. As the sole rights owner for the final round of Asian World Cup qualifiers in the Middle East, the network — with production help from Lagardère — last Tuesday broadcast the biggest soccer game in recent Saudi Arabian history: a 1-0 win over Japan that guaranteed the Saudis a place at next summer’s World Cup in Russia.

BeIN’s reporter at the game, an Omani national, was removed from the venue hosting it, King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, and questioned by the authorities before being allowed into the stadium minutes before the match kicked off, according to the broadcaster. The reporter, Hasan al-Hashimi, also reported having had some of his equipment taken, while at other venues, players and coaches have boycotted interviews with the channel, and reporters have been told to remove cubes bearing the beIN logo from their microphones.

“The accumulation of all the incidents when there is a Saudi, U.A.E. or Egyptian team playing is starting to have a significant impact,” beIN’s Jordan said. “I have been working in sports for 20 years and have never seen anything like this.”

The Saudi soccer federation did not reply to a request for a comment.

BeIN has grown to become a major plank of Qatar’s efforts to use sports to brand itself as a global and regional power, and the company has committed billions of dollars to buy rights to the most popular soccer competitions, including the UEFA Champions League, Spain’s La Liga and England’s Premier League. That buying spree came after Qatar in 2010 was named as the host of the sport’s biggest event, the World Cup.

In its successful pitch for that tournament, Qatari officials had promoted regional unity. The day before FIFA’s final vote, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned, the wife of the Qatari emir at the time, said just that. Dressed from head to toe in maroon, Qatar’s national color, Sheikha Mozah said a World Cup in Qatar would bring the entire Middle East together, “from Doha to Damascus.”

Current developments suggest the opposite. A land, air and sea blockade by Qatar’s neighbors has affected the country’s $200 billion pre-World Cup infrastructure program.

“No doubt that the blockade has caused an inconvenience,” Hassan al-Thawadi, head of the 2022 World Cup organizing committee, said in an interview recently broadcast by Al Jazeera. He said Qatar could no longer work with some companies that had been contracted as suppliers or service providers for World Cup projects. “We have very quickly moved on to Plan B, found alternative sources of supply — alternative routes of supply as well,” he said.

For beIN, the difficulties have been felt on a weekly basis. A beIN reporter was forced to remove the company’s logos from his microphone at the first leg of a two-game Asian Champions League series between the U.A.E.’s Al Ain and Al-Hilal from Saudi Arabia, and it was unclear if the same would occur at the return match on Monday. The Saudi and U.A.E. soccer federations did not respond to emails requesting comment on the dispute.

BeIN is the sole authorized Middle East broadcaster for that game, part of a four-year agreement worth roughly $100 million. Yet since the political dispute began, a pirated version of the channel has been streamed illegally in Saudi Arabia. The bootleg operation broadcasts as Be-outQ, a play on the Qatari channel’s name. BeIN is pursuing legal action, Jordan said.

England’s Premier League and UEFA, the Champions League organizer, are among the partners that have lent support to beIN.

“We have said many times that the protection of our copyright, and the investment made by our broadcast partners, is critically important to the Premier League and the future health of English football,” said Richard Molnar, the Premier League’s director of broadcasting. But it is unclear what influence the leagues can bring to bear.

In Africa, where beIN has a contract of at least eight years for the MENA Region with the regional governing body for soccer, the Confederation of African Football, the network’s staff members have faced severe obstacles in nations sympathetic to the boycott of Qatar. On June 20, as Morocco’s Wydad Athletic Club prepared to play Al Ahly from Egypt, Al Ahly’s coach attempted to remove beIN’s microphone from an array at a pregame news conference, saying angrily: “No, I’m not going to talk to beIN sports. We don’t deal with beIN sports. Take beIN sports mike from here.”

BeIN’s complaints prompted the African confederation to issue a directive to its members in June, urging teams and federations to set aside their differences with beIN and allow “reason to prevail.” But two months later, the problems persist.

“What we are asking from the football authorities are significant measures that are dissuasive,” Jordan said. “They haven’t done much, and the proof of that is the incidents are growing.”

A spokesman for the African confederation did not respond to a request for comment.

Complicating matters, Asian soccer’s governing body, the Asian Football Confederation, is led by Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, a member of the royal family of Bahrain, which is among the countries backing the blockade. Sheikh Salman has said he has recused himself from any conversations or decisions involving the dispute, and the Asian confederation has told beIN that the issue will be handled by its disciplinary committee, according to three people familiar with the matter, but has otherwise not taken a public position.

In a statement, a senior vice president for the Asian confederation, Praful Patel, said: “Integrity stretches beyond the action on the field to also protecting the rights of our broadcast and commercial partners, and enforcing the A.F.C. rules and regulations which govern matches played under its jurisdiction. I have been asked by the president to adjudicate in these matters which affect the West Asia Zone during the present challenging times and I will carry out those duties by ensuring this is a most comprehensive investigation.”

When the Asian confederation’s contract with beIN ends, the network has the right to match any rival bid and renew it. BeIN has no plans to discontinue its aggressive push to accumulate sports rights in the region, Jordan said.

[Doctor DOOM]

I dont understand. YEARS AGO, when AFC was supposedly not as proficient as today, they INSISTED on last round games be played at the same time, IRRESPECTIVE of the zone in such a wide continent.

But somehow this year, they behaved like total amateurs - not that they arent in reality. But they didnt even pretend to be professional this time!
They allowed the MOST CRUCIAL FINAL ROUND be played at different times .... because the "continent has wider time zones".
And as strange as it has always been, the lucky recipients of this stroke of luck are none other than the TRADITIONAL & PERENNIAL LUCKY saudis!

It just doesnt sit right, no matter how you look at it.


Anyway, I hope they start behaving more professional. not only in scheduling, but also allotting venues.
starting with syria's home game against aussies in that horrible, malaysian swimming pool.
looking forward to see the much hated aussies rape the syrians