Iran’s Omid Team defeated China 3-2 to qualify for the quarter-final of the AFC U-23 championship .
Iran scored through Arsalan Motahari (38′), Ehsan Pahlavan ((41′) and Mehdi Torabi (48) to assure a second place position in the group and set a meeting with Group B leader Japan.
Like the other two group A matches against Syria and Qatar, Khakpour arranged another different line-up to face the point-less China.
Iran’s starting line was :
Mohammadreza Akhbari; Ali Abdollahzadeh, Reza Aliyari, Roozbeh Cheshmi, Hossein Kanani, Milad Kamandani, Ehsan Pahlavan, Mahan Rahmani, Shahin Saghebi , Mahdi Torabi, Arsalan Motahhari.
Again like the other two previous matches, Omid quickly took control of the match and at one stage the ball possession exceeded 70% of the half. The Chinese were content with defending in numbers and parking the bus against the more agile , and more skilful Iranian players.
Despite the effort and majority of the ball possession , Omid fail to break the Chinese wall until late in the half , when Motahari was at the end of a blunder by the Chinese keeper and slot the ball into the neet. It was less than two minutes when the Chinese forward Chang Feiya passed two Iranian defenders with amazing ease and then his shot hit Cheshmi to deflect pass the wrong-footed Akhbari’s into goal. It was 1-1 with 5 minutes to half time, but Iran came back with a vengeance and scored the second goal by Ehsan Pahlavn with a neat placed shoot.
The first half ended 2-1 for Iran.
At the beginning of the second half , Iran extended its lead and took the match by the scruff of the neck through a remarkable free kick goal the star of the team , Mahdi Torabi. In the 70th minute , another poor defending coverage and unnecessary foul by Abdollhzadeh resulted in a penalty which China’s Liao Lesheng converted with a power kick into the net.
Despite the Iranian superiority and a much better passing game, Omid still suffers last-minute poor ball control with some bad passing in crucial timings. The margin of victory could have been easily increased by 2 to 3 goals with better ball control and calm playing.
On Friday , Japan will be a tough nut to crack. Although hardly a formidable team, the Japanese tend to stick to their principles and football ideology making them solid at any age level. Their high work ethics, team work, solid defending and fast transition has already given them the upper hand in Group B . Omid Team , will be dealing with a high caliber opposition. Omid needs organization especially the back four who are expected to suffer greatly from the speed of the Japanese.