Iran’s Omid team defeated Palestine U23 team 3-0 in Azadi stadium on Friday to consolidate its position at top of Group C of AFC U23 Championship qualifiers. Iran has 6 points from two games and will be playing Afghanistan on Sunday before completing the schedule with a penultimate game against fierce rivals Saudi Arabia.

The Palestinians proved to be a tough opponent for Iran’s Omid team and through some organized defending denied Iran scoring in the first half. Despite relatively more ball possession , Omid Team failed to capitalize on their far and few scoring chances until the 49th minute when Sardar Azmoun showed his class and opened the scoring to put Iran 1-0 in the lead.

Iran was hoping for a big margin of goals against not so strong opposition , but Palestine not only defended well, it took the initiative and started attacking in numbers creating several good scoring chances. Khakpour , sensing the slim lead might be at danger from the Palestinians attacks  , opted to defend that one goal lead. Omid Team seemed to be content with holding to the ball and passing diagonally hoping to hold its 1 goal advantage until end of the game for all the 3 points. However, two fatal mistakes from the Palestinian Goalkeeper Rami , who was one of the better players during the match , sealed the fate of the match.

10 minutes before the final whistle, a tame deflected ball from Alireza Jahanbakhsh was easily collected by Rami who dropped himself to collect only to see the ball get away from him for Amir Arslan Motahari to pounce like a hawk and lot into the net. That made the score 2-0 for Iran and Palestine had a mountain to climb.

Just before the final whistle , Rami committed another error when he misjudged the run of Motahari and bumped into him for the Jordanian referee to immediately call a penalty. Amir Motahari took the penalty and scored, but the referee whistled to be re-taken because of an Iranian player encroachment into the area. Motahari made no mistake from the second attempt scoring his second and Iran’s third.

With 6 points in the bag , Omid team has quite a good chance to qualify for the final tournament in Qatar in January 2016 which are also the qualifiers for the Olympic Games Football tournament. Earlier on Saudi Arabia drew 0-0 with Afghanistan.

 AFC Asian U-23 Championship Qualifiers

Tehran, Iran

Group C Table

Remaining matches