Iran entered the Asian Games soccer tournament as a seeded team after FIFA temporarily lifted the defending champion's competition ban.
Iran will face India, Hong Kong and the Maldives in Group D after the tournament's second round was redrawn on Monday.
Iran's return to the tournament is a blow for qualifier Iraq, which replaced its rival neighbor as the Pool D seed in Sunday's original draw. Iraq will now contest Pool E with China, Oman and Malaysia.
PHOTO: AP
Soccer world governing body FIFA suspended Iran from international soccer last week for failing to reinstate its elected president, Mohammed Dadgan, and comply with FIFA statutes regarding the independence of member associations.
The reinstatement of Iran, which won the Asian Games title in 1974, 1990, 1998 and 2002, means four teams from the eight-team qualifying first round advance to the main draw, with Syria and Kyrgystan replacing Yemen and Turkmenistan, who withdrew from the tournament last week.
Under the revised draw, Kyrgystan now plays Thailand, Kuwait and Palestine in Pool C, while Syria joins Pool F, where it will face 2002 silver medalist Japan, North Korea and Pakistan.
Jordan joins Iraq as the other first round qualifier and meets host Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan in Group A.
Group B remains unchanged from the original schedule and includes South Korea, Bahrain, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Tajikistan, which was drawn in Pool A last Wednesday, is now out of the competition.
The Asian Football Confederation's official Web site said that Iran's reinstatement followed an undertaking by the country's Physical Education Organization that it would comply with FIFA's statutes.
The lifting of the ban applies only to the Iran under-23 team and is exclusively for the Asian Games.
"The suspension for all other international activities will remain valid," FIFA boss Sepp Blatter was quoted as saying from the Soccerex conference in Dubai.
The Asian Games second round began yesterday, with the 24 teams split into six groups of four. The top team from each group, along with the top two runners-up, will advance to the quarter-finals.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences. The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20. The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the
RSS