The 17th Asian Games are being played these days in Incheon, South Korea. As usual, the football tournament is the main event. The competition is between Under 23 national squads, similar to the Olympic traditional tournament.
As the knock-out stage is starting, we decided to summarize the group stage and analyze a few of the forthcoming battles in the last 16 phase.
29 national squads have started the tournament, while two giant favorite teams stood above the rest: Hosts South Korea, and Japan, the reigning champions of the competition. Iran, North Korea, Thailand and Uzbekistan were also counted as potential teams to lift the cup in the end of the games.
There is this sentence that says: ”Where there’s expectations, there’s disappointments”, and for sure there was one for the Persian team. Iran failed to go through the group stage, gaining only one point, scoring twice, displaying a disastrous performance versus Vietnam, who continued to the next stage with Kyrgyzstan. Just three months ago, the national squad of Iran almost stopped Lionel Messi and Argentina in their opener at the World Cup, but now the U-23 team is eliminated. That’s a big ‘drop on achievements’ for Persian football, who will need to start building their future players all over again.
Like every big tournament, next to a big failure there’s a great success. The ‘Black Horses’ of these Asian Games are Iraq, Jordan and Palestine. None of these teams was scheduled to Pot 1 before the group draw, and they all went through as group winners to the next stage.
The Palestinians have beaten both Tajikistan and Oman with great goals by Sameh Mara’aba and Ahmed Maher, finishing top of the group for the first time in history (Despite a 2-1 defeat to Singapore, that should be a 'Warning' sign).
Jordan faced a difficult group with the United Emirates and India, but gained the top seat thanks to an own goal by Mohammed Darwish, the Emirati defender, during the game between the teams.
Between these three, Iraq dealt with the hardest mission and finished the first stage in an impressive way. Iraq was drawn from the 4th pot of quality before the games, and had to play Japan, Kuwait and Nepal. While most bookies saw them as a contender for last place, the Iraqi players won all their games, including an aggressive 3-1 over Japan, that certainly gave their people back home a good reason to smile during their country's hard time . We wonder what the Islamic State’s Media Officer will say about it! Sakhtein al-Iraq!
The big games in the next round are: South Korea - Hong Kong ; Palestine-Japan, as the tournament’s surprise will face the favorites; Thailand - China, in an equal battle on a place in the quarters; and of course Jordan-Kyrgyzstan and Iraq-Tajikistan as the moment of truth for the groups stage’ surprises.
The Asian Games are producing a great tournament this year. A small fairy tail of emotions, prestige and surprises. Stay tuned here for more highlights from the knock-out stages.