Iran Women down India to set up Jordan showdown
Fatemeh Ardestani opened the scoring at Petra Stadium in the 35th minute before doubling her side’s advantage on the stroke of half-time.
Behnaz Taherkhani added a third two minutes into second-half stoppage time as Iran mirrored the result the Jordanians achieved against India when the South and Central/West Zone qualification group kicked-off on Sunday.
With only the three teams in the group the winners of the Iran-Jordan clash will advance to the second round and with both sides level on points and goal difference there will be a penalty shootout to decide the outcome should the match be tied at the end of the 90 minutes.
The ASEAN Zone group – which consists of hosts Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Guam and Timor Leste – kicks off in Manila on Friday with the winner of the round-robin league joining Iran or Jordan in the second round, where they will meet the teams that finished 6th to 8th at the last AFC U-16 Women’s Championship (Thailand, Myanmar and Chinese Taipei) for a single-round league tournament in December.
The winners will then join Korea Republic, DPR Korea, Japan, Australia and China at the 2011 AFC U-16 Women’s Championship finals.