Kaveh Rezaei hattrick sinks Kuwait [VIDEO]

Persianfootball.com – MUSCAT, Iran concluded the first ever chaotic u-22 Asian Cup with a well deserved 3-1 win over Kuwait, in the end finishing third in the group due to group winners Australia’s embarassing 0-4 thrashing in the hands of Japan.

Kaveh Rezaei, the only regular offensive player available to coach Human Afazeli, scored a hattrick before Kuwait added a late consolidation. The win would have been enough if Australia would have at least held Japan to a draw.

But the Soceroos, often the first to complain about lack of fairplay in the AFC, also didn’t live up to FIFA’s codex, going down against a Japanese side that had struggled to a goalless draw against Kuwait and being all but the better side in an entertaining 3-3 draw versus Iran.

However, the three goals increased Saipa Karaj striker Rezaei’s goal tally to five after his brace versus Japan on the opening day and not only make him top the goalscorer’s chart of the tourney so far, but also frustrates the Iranian fans over the once more laughable scheduling from AFC.

The extremely odd timing of the tournament outside the FIFA schedule and in a phase any World Cup participant couldn’t afford to halt the domestic league had kept high profile players Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Sardar Azmoun, Payam Sadeghian, Mohsen Mosalman, Omid Alishah, Yaghoub Karimi, Milad Gharibi, Bakhtiar Rahmani and Mohammad-Reza Khanzadeh away from the tournament and had prompted Iran coach Alireza Mansourian to resign.

The tournament had initially been scheduled to be held last summer, but was moved due to the local East Asian Football Championship.

The next edition of the u-22 Asian Cup will take place in 12 months already and will serve as qualifying tournament for the 2016 Olympic games.

Below comes a video of the goals.