2022 Qualifiers - Other Games Thread (AFC & beyond)

[Keshwardoost]

Spots secured in Asia as Canada close in
Thursday, 3 February 2022, 08:00 (local time)
IR Iran and Korea Republic qualify
Canada tighten their grip with three wins from three
Joy for Uruguay, despair for Colombia
At the end of a dramatic week of FIFA World Cup™ qualifying action across three continents, in which ambitions were realised, hopes revived and dreams dashed, we round up the main events.

AFC: Iran, Korea Republic through as Socceroos stumble
Fixtures and results

Success stories
IR Iran and Korea Republic’s stranglehold on Group A was strengthened by successive wins for each as first Team Melli, then the Taegeuk Warrios, sealed their spots at Qatar 2022. Despite losing to Iran on Tuesday, UAE remain well placed to finish third and earn a play-off spot after beating Syria in their previous game and seeing their rivals falter. Japan were the biggest winners in Group B, meanwhile, earning back-to-back victories over China PR and Saudi Arabia that have left them just one point off the section-leading Saudis.

TOPSHOT - Iran's players celebrate with their fans after qualifying for the 2022 Qatar World Cup after their win against Iraq in the Asian Qualifiers football match at the Azadi Sports Complex in the capital Tehran, on January 27, 2022. (Photo by Atta KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™

Taremi and Skocic savour Iran’s success

28 Jan 2022



Tales of woe

Although still within reach of UAE in Group A, the hopes of both Lebanon and Iraq were severely dented, with each side taking just one point from a possible six over the past week. Australia, meanwhile, slipped three points behind Japan in Group B after conceding a costly late equaliser to draw 2-2 in Oman. That result also served to officially end the hopes of Branko Ivankovic’s Omani hopefuls, who had gone down 1-0 to Saudi Arabia five days earlier.

The stat
16 – Their 2-0 reverse in Saitama ended Saudi Arabia’s impressive 16-match unbeaten run in World Cup qualifying. Their conquerors, meanwhile, look to have unearthed a reliable goalscorer in Junya Ito, the Genk forward who has found the net in each of the team’s last four preliminary matches.

The standings
Group A

Team Played Points GD
IR Iran 8 22 +11
Korea Republic 8 20 +9
United Arab Emirates 8 9 0
Lebanon 8 6 -3
Iraq 8 5 -7
Syria 8 2 -10


Group B

Team Played Points GD
Saudi Arabia 8 19 +5
Japan 8 18 +6
Australia 8 15 +9
Oman 8 8 -2
China PR 8 5 -8
Vietnam 8 3 -10


What’s next?
Two rounds of matches remain, with all eyes sure to be on Australia’s decisive double-header against Japan (H) and Saudi Arabia (A) on 24 and 29 March.

Canada keeper Milan Borjan celebrates after defeating the USA 2-0 in men s World Cup Qualifier at sold out Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, Ontario Sunday Jan. 30, 2022. Canada News - January 30, 2022.
Concacaf: Brilliant Canada on the brink
Fixtures and results

Success stories
With a home showdown against USA sandwiched in between two tough away trips, many wondered if this was the period in which table-topping Canada would begin to falter. As it was, John Herdman’s side thrived under the pressure, winning all three matches to stretch their lead over the US to four points and put themselves within touching distance of a first FIFA World Cup since 1986. USA and Mexico had to make do with strengthening their grip on the second and third automatic qualifying slots, with seven points from nine leaving El Tri four clear of fourth-placed Panama.

EDMONTON, CANADA - NOVEMBER 12: Kamal Miller of Canada celebrates during the World Cup Qualifier match between Canada v Costa Rica at the Commonwealth Stadium on November 12, 2021 in Edmonton Canada (Photo by Dale Macmillan/Soccrates/Getty Images)
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™

Miller: We’re proud to be making history for Canada

27 Jan 2022



Tales of woe
Two defeats in their three matches have left Panama’s hopes of a top-three finish hanging by a thread, and Costa Rica are now just one point behind Los Canaleros in the race for fourth and an intercontinental play-off spot. Honduras, meanwhile, lost all three of their fixtures and remain rooted to the foot of the table.

The stat
18 – Canada are unbeaten in their last 18 World Cup qualifiers, with their last defeat having come against Honduras over five years ago (in September 2016). John Herdman’s side have also kept 11 clean sheets in their last 16 preliminary matches.

The standings
Team Played Points GD
Canada 11 25 +14
USA 11 21 +9
Mexico 11 21 +6
Panama 11 17 +1
Costa Rica 11 16 +1
El Salvador 11 9 -7
Jamaica 11 7 -7
Honduras 11 3 -17

What’s next?
Everything will be decided over three rounds of matches between 24 and 30 March, with Costa Rica-Canada and Mexico-USA mouth-watering fixtures with which to open that massive triple-header.



MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY - FEBRUARY 01: Edinson Cavani of Uruguay celebrates after scoring the third goal of his team during a match between Uruguay and Venezuela as part of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Qualifiers at Centenario Stadium on February 01, 2022 in Montevideo, Uruguay. (Photo by Pablo Porciuncula - Pool/Getty Images)

CONMEBOL: Celeste surge as Cafeteros crumble
Fixtures and results

Success stories

With back-to-back victories over Paraguay and Venezuela, Uruguay emerged as the week’s biggest winners. La Celeste now occupy South America’s fourth and final automatic qualifying slot, one point ahead of Peru, who followed up a huge 1-0 win in Colombia by drawing 1-1 at home to third-placed Ecuador. The already-qualified duo of Argentina and Brazil continue to flex their muscles too, with Lautaro Martinez on target in successive wins for La Albiceleste, and the in-form Raphinha sparking a 4-0 Seleção success against Paraguay.

Tales of woe
Colombia’s fragile hopes were further dented by two 1-0 defeats, at home to Peru and away to Argentina. Los Cafeteros, who reached the knockout stage of the 2014 and 2018 FIFA World Cups, now languish in seventh position, five points adrift of Uruguay and four behind Peru in the intercontinental play-off spot. Bolivia, meanwhile, are officially out of contention after back-to-back losses – the same fate that befell the bottom two sides, Paraguay and Venezuela.




The stat
7 – Colombia have remarkably failed to score in each of their last seven World Cup qualifiers. They now have just one win from their last 11 matches in this competition.

The standings
Table Played Points GD
Brazil 15 39 +27
Argentina 15 35 +16
Ecuador 16 25 +10
Uruguay 16 22 -3
Peru 16 21 -4
Chile 16 19 -1
Colombia 16 17 -3
Bolivia 16 15 -12
Paraguay 16 13 -14
Venezuela 16 10 -16


What’s next?
The final two rounds of South American qualifiers will be played on 24 and 29 March, with Uruguay-Peru a potentially decisive fixture on the first of those dates.

https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/men...anada-close-in

[Philosophy_King]

yeah my bet would be on Iran beating Egypt atm.. also beating Senegal.. but senegal would be more eaven.
egypt isnt dangerous going forward, maybe given 6 more months woth CQ they might be very solid.
atm i would say 2-0. 3-1, 4-1 for Iran vs Egypt. (one goal for egypt for if salah has a moment on his own) 70/30 in Irans favour
Iran vs Senegal I would say, 2-1, 1-1 2-2 60/40 in Irans favour
I have to say, with all respect for the teams, africa cup was weaker than asia cup
teams like, Iran, Japan, Korea, Saudi and Australia are levels above these teams, only exception being Senegal who are at the same level.
i would love to se friendlies vs both senegal and egypt, i do enjoy watching both teams play and Iran and these teams would benefint from friendlies..
at world cup, anything can happen and the team with best preperations will win. they are not that far away that a team with bad preps will win anyway.

In current Form we would no-way defeat Egypt 4-1 or 3-0. I would expect a pretty even match between the two sides. In fact i would give the edge slightly to Egypt, given that they have CQ as head-coach who knows TM-players, their strength/psyche etc.

But generally speaking it is very annoying how Europeans give so much attention to African Cup in comparison to the Asian Cup. I think over the last 8 years we closed the gap to Africa as a football continent. Teams like Korea, Japan, Iran, KSA, Australia, Qatar can def. compete with Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon.

[Philosophy_King]

Under CQ, we never lost to Bahrain. That was under Wilmots.
Under CQ, we also dominated Korea where as Sko struggled against them in Tehran..

I was saying that under CQ we were not able to defeat Bahrain in Manama, which we did for the first time under Sko. Read my post properly.
Under CQ we dominated Korea only in one game at Azadi (WCQ 2018), a Korean side which struggled to defeat Uzbek/Qatar and relied on our result against Syria in our last game (speaking of WCQ 2018). This was properly the worst Korean side we had ever faced, given the fact that they qualified easily/constantly to WC for decades (and in this WCQ). All the other matches that we had with Korea, we got dominated or it was pretty even. In our most recent clash with them under Sko in Tehran, it was a balanced game, where we had arguably the better scoring chances.

[Keshwardoost]

In current Form we would no-way defeat Egypt 4-1 or 3-0. I would expect a pretty even match between the two sides. In fact i would slightly give the edge to Egypt, given that they have CQ who knows TM-players, their strength/psyche etc.
But generally speaking it is very annoying how Europeans give so much attention to African Cup in comparison to the Asian Cup. I think over the last 8 years we closed the gap to Africa as a football continent. Teams like Korea, Japan, Iran, KSA, Australia, Qatar can def. compete with Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon.

yeah i have to put a litle heart in the predictions.. thing is, their fantastic goalie saved them on several occasions or senegal would have won by 3. if TM would not waste chances I do believe we could score some goalse against them and win by a few.

i agree, many of the sites doesnt even have asia cup as an option to follow the scores on. but they have africa cup.
i even remember the text tv/ tele text pages here had exaclty averything except the asia cup, they had an own side for africa up every time..
its so strange that they pretend asia doesnt excist..

[Iranianarsenal11]

I always said and still believe in it:
Being this defensive may win you LEAGUES, but will almost never win you TOURNAMENTS.

I respectfully disagree. Rather, I think it’s the opposite.

In tournaments, being defensive wears out opponents and is a great strategy in order to somewhat make it a 50-50 chance of proceeding through penalties, especially if your team is weaker (I.E Egypt vs Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal)

However, to win leagues, you need balance. 3 points are what matters and attacking quality is needed. CQ to me was never a league winner but a tournament maestro and a psychological wizard. Hence why I think if we made the knockouts in 2014 or 2018 I believe we could’ve even reached the semis as crazy as it sounds.

[Iranianarsenal11]

If Iran played Egypt right now it would most likely be a 0-0 or 1-1 draw.

Or a 1-0 Iran win if Azmoun and Taremi are in top form

[Philosophy_King]

I respectfully disagree. Rather, I think it’s the opposite.
In tournaments, being defensive wears out opponents and is a great strategy in order to somewhat make it a 50-50 chance of proceeding through penalties, especially if your team is weaker (I.E Egypt vs Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal)
However, to win leagues, you need balance. 3 points are what matters and attacking quality is needed. CQ to me was never a league winner but a tournament maestro and a psychological wizard. Hence why I think if we made the knockouts in 2014 or 2018 I believe we could’ve even reached the semis as crazy as it sounds.

I totally agree that CQ is a psychological Genius, even his "enemies" like Karimi admitted that!

But what make you think, that we would have reached the Semis in WC 2014 & 2018 with CQ, if we had made the knockouts? Beside our performance against Argentina, there was no indication in the Nigeria & Bosnia game that makes me believe, we would have had much success in the knockout-stage. The same applies to WC 2018 where we didn't score a goal from open play and barely created scoring chances of clean counter-attacks our from a proper built-up game. Defensive stability is very important but you need to pose a thread in the attack also otherwise you can't comeback from falling behind. If you want to base your argument on Egypt's Road to the Finals in this Africa Cup, i can only refer to the Asian Cup 2015 where we lost to Iraq in the Penalties. I don't think that Coaches have much impact on the Penalties beside choosing the Penalty takers and Goalies. Big chunk of Penalty-shootours is luck and the rest are the mental strength/nervous of the Players. We had always issues with Penalties, hence i do not believe that this "strategy" (parking the bus and hope for Penalties) would work out for TM. Furthermore, when we faced a real opponent in knockout-stage, like Japan we got exposed. Now if i am thinking a scenario where we had to face Germany, France, Belgium or Brazil in knockout-stages i am not too optimistic to be honest.

[Iranianarsenal11]

I totally agree that CQ is a psychological Genius, even his "enemies" like Karimi admitted that!

But what make you think, that we would have reached the Semis in WC 2014 & 2018 with CQ, if we had made the knockouts? Beside our performance against Argentina, there was no indication in the Nigeria & Bosnia game that makes me believe, we would have had much success in the knockout-stage. The same applies to WC 2018 where we didn't score a goal from open play and barely created scoring chances of clean counter-attacks our from a proper built-up game. Defensive stability is very important but you need to pose a thread in the attack also otherwise you can't comeback from falling behind. If you want to base your argument on Egypt's Road to the Finals in this Africa Cup, i can only refer to the Asian Cup 2015 where we lost to Iraq in the Penalties. I don't think that Coaches have much impact on the Penalties beside choosing the Penalty takers and Goalies. Big chunk of Penalty-shootours is luck and the rest are the mental strength/nervous of the Players. We had always issues with Penalties, hence i do not believe that this "strategy" (parking the bus and hope for Penalties) would work out for TM. Furthermore, when we faced a real opponent in knockout-stage, like Japan we got exposed. Now if i am thinking a scenario where we had to face Germany, France, Belgium or Brazil in knockout-stages i am not too optimistic to be honest.

The same way that CQ brought Egypt to the AFCON finals. Ultra defensive pure 0-0 madness.

Let’s not forget Egypt didn’t score a single goal versus Ivory Coast and Cameroon and still made it through, and against Senegal they held them to zero goals as well.

I agree with your Asian cup sentiments but I must add that one flaw of CQs was that he played down to the level of his opponents. This came in our favor against superior sides (Argentina, Portugal, Spain, etc) but also worked against us against some Arab teams like Syria who tied us twice in 2018 wcq.

[naderb94]

If Iran played Egypt right now it would most likely be a 0-0 or 1-1 draw.

Or a 1-0 Iran win if Azmoun and Taremi are in top form

That's fair to say.. They're sorta like South Korea where they have bunch of solid players and then that one superstar striker. I can see it being 1-0 or a 1-1 draw myself.

[naderb94]

The same way that CQ brought Egypt to the AFCON finals. Ultra defensive pure 0-0 madness.

Let’s not forget Egypt didn’t score a single goal versus Ivory Coast and Cameroon and still made it through, and against Senegal they held them to zero goals as well.

I agree with your Asian cup sentiments but I must add that one flaw of CQs was that he played down to the level of his opponents. This came in our favor against superior sides (Argentina, Portugal, Spain, etc) but also worked against us against some Arab teams like Syria who tied us twice in 2018 wcq.

You make great points but the Syria games were flukes. We played them in a monsoon field the first time where nothing was possible for us and then gave up a fluke goal in Tehran when we already had the WC berth secured.
But in all honestly in 2018 WC, we had some really good attacks against Spain and Portugal where we got unlucky.

[Futbaldoost]

Another interesting fact this year is that the way UEFA round 2 draw has shaped up either Portugal or Italy will be missing WC 2022 and that's assuming they both beat their opponents namely Turkey and North Macedonia on March 24th. Italy did not make it to Russia 2018 and TM ended up getting the camp outside Moscow they had reserved. Either way, it will be sad to see any of those two miss the WC.

Go TM!

[kastro]

Another interesting fact this year is that the way UEFA round 2 draw has shaped up either Portugal or Italy will be missing WC 2022 and that's assuming they both beat their opponents namely Turkey and North Macedonia on March 24th. Italy did not make it to Russia 2018 and TM ended up getting the camp outside Moscow they had reserved. Either way, it will be sad to see any of those two miss the WC.

Go TM!

It’s definitely something that needs to be fixed. FIFA rankings is not a true indication of quality so using that for seeding is what usually causes these scenarios. Happens in CAF all the time. I’m half Turkish, so definitely hoping we can sneak in.

[taremiscores]

[Leicester City]

[kastro]

Queiroz still hasn’t fixed what my main issue is with him. He left Ahly’s number 10 Afsha off the squad and Zamalek’s number 10 Ashour was played at RB. These are both ball handlers that would we’re sorely missing in midfield. I think the member inarsenewetrust noticed this about our midfield.

He played 2 CDMs in Elneny/Fathi, with a box2box CM in Elsoulia. That was good to play defensive but severely limited the attack. If he played Ashour/Afsha instead of Elsoulia we for sure would have created more and in turn scored more. I don’t understand the reluctantness.