2018 Asian Men's Handball Championship

[Ata]

Will start 18 january!

Iran in group A with Japan and Uzbekistan

Games:
19 January 2018
15:00 Iran v Uzbekistan

20 January 2018
17:00 Japan v Iran


Schedule

[Nokhodi]

Do we have a full squad? Are our legionnaires there?
Is Qatar still a superteam?

[Nokhodi]

I just reviewed wiki, it seems a good chunk of our team plays in Romania... is that good or bad?
Also sad to see Iman Jamali still plays for Hungary, and not Iran.

[Ata]

I just reviewed wiki, it seems a good chunk of our team plays in Romania... is that good or bad?
Also sad to see Iman Jamali still plays for Hungary, and not Iran.

Yes ,many of the play in Romania, I follow some on instagram, it seems that they are doing well...
I hope they all play for Iran in this tournement.
Qatar is still good but not a superteam anymore

[Ata]

I just reviewed wiki, it seems a good chunk of our team plays in Romania... is that good or bad?
Also sad to see Iman Jamali still plays for Hungary, and not Iran.

its better to ignore him like he never excisted...

he is not an Iranian anymore...

[Ab-Gosht]

Well Esteki is a monster for Iran. if he's in he can score 10 goals per game if he wants

[Irannn]

We almost have our full squad here, only Sajjad Nadri got injured and left the team. this is good that the core team is playing in Europe but they had a very short preparation. we didn't have a coach until couple months ago and they had no other option to re-hire Borut Macek for the 3rd time !! he is a good coach though.

We lost to Qatar few days ago by 5 goals in a friendly and our players were very disappointed with that, they wanted to beat Qatar badly, Qatar hired a complete team before the 2015 World Champs and some of them are retired now but apparently they bought few more players and they are still the clear favorite for the title.

top 4 teams qualify for the WCH , this should be our goal here. we wlil beat Uzbekistan by so many goals and will pass the 1st round, but the main round is important. if we beat Japan and finish 1st, our next round group will be slightly easier.

after Qatar, I consider South Korea and Bahrain as our main rivals here, then Japan and Saudi Arabia. these 6 teams in Asia are competing for 4 World Cup slots.

the only match in question for the 1st round is Iran-Japan, the other matches are quite predictable, so here is the 2nd round groups

Group I : winner (IRN/JPN) - Oman - South Korea - Saudi Arabia
Group II: loser (IRN/JPN) - Bahrain - UAE - Qatar

[_Navid_]

We have a really strong team this year, possibly the strongest we have ever had. Too bad the traitor is not there, we don't have a great replacement for him.

In our good day, even winning the championship shouldn't be out of reach.

[IRAN300]

Nice article about all 18 players of the squad.

https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1...¯-تصاویر

[Ata]

Iran won 37-18 against Uzbeks

[Irannn]

A bit disappointed with the 1st half but I guess you can't judge the team against a very weak team. still they scored more than Japan and a draw will be enough tomorrow. Macek almost used two different squads in 1st and 2nd half. the 2nd one was better with Esteki brothers. but I think the real starting lineup is a mixture of both.

I watched few matches today, Korea was a bit disappointing again today. I'm not even sure if they can beat UAE. but still we can't judge them against Bangladesh or India ! all 8 qualified team will play each other tomorrow to determine the next round groups. I hope for fair play tomorrow, I hope nobody loses intentionally to pick another group.

[Ata]

A bit disappointed with the 1st half but I guess you can't judge the team against a very weak team. still they scored more than Japan and a draw will be enough tomorrow. Macek almost used two different squads in 1st and 2nd half. the 2nd one was better with Esteki brothers. but I think the real starting lineup is a mixture of both.

I watched few matches today, Korea was a bit disappointing again today. I'm not even sure if they can beat UAE. but still we can't judge them against Bangladesh or India ! all 8 qualified team will play each other tomorrow to determine the next round groups. I hope for fair play tomorrow, I hope nobody loses intentionally to pick another group.

plz bro give an analys of the game if you have time

[Irannn]

plz bro give an analys of the game if you have time

well. hard to say more, Uzbekistan is a pretty weak team, but they scored so many goals against our "weak" defense in first half. we had Babasafari on goal in first half and he was disappointing, Macek used Heidari-rad and later Ali Rahimi as GK in 2nd half and they did much better. we also missed so many 1 on 1 chances for being careless.

from what I remember Pouya Norouzi was the main scorer in 1st half while Sajjad Esteki and Jalal Kiani played better and scored more in 2nd half. as usual we were not that good on wings.

we will be favorite tomorrow but remember Japan will host the Olympics in 2020 and they have long term plan. their women team was unbelievably good at the WCH few weeks ago, even thought their male team wasn't good in preparation matches but still they hired a very good coach and will be dangerous. still I expect a 4-5 goals win for Iran. We have to win to avoid Qatar and Bahrain in next round. if Bahrain plays fair, I won't be surprised if they lose on purpose to avoid Qatar. they will play 2 hours before our game.

btw I know handball is amateur in Australia and New Zealand but still they are very weak by any standards ! I watched them both today. NZ probably can't even beat Bangladesh. since IHF removed direct World Cup spot from Oceania, this is the first time we have Oceania teams in Asian Champs. even though we had Australia in Olympic Qualifier before and we knew how bad they are.

[Irannn]

A convincing win but not great over Japan, we could beat them by 10 if our guys weren't careless at the end. still a good win overall. our attack was flawless for something like 15 minutes in the first half but we stated losing shots when Esteki brothers got tired. Norouzinejad was disastrous today surprsingly. if we want to go to the final our GKs have to save more. none of them were good today and Macek once again tried all 3 of them. our offense is good enough but we have to become better than this defensively.

South Korea beat UAE by just one goal today. so our next round schedule is confirmed now

22 January, Iran vs Saudi Arabia
23 January, Iran vs South Korea
24 January, Iran vs Oman

I don't like Saudi and Korea playing the last group match, we have to be careful to not leave our fate into their hands, both teams play dirty when they need.

[_Navid_]

Good win today from the boys. I thought Japan would be better than this.

Anyone know why Omid Sekenari is not in the squad? He was a star and a joy to watch in Asian games 2014.