By David Owen
June 16 – Iran ended eight years of Asian hurt at the World Cup finals in St Petersburg on Friday, cashing in on Aziz Bouhaddouz’s stoppage time own goal to record a hard-fought 1-0 win over Morocco.
While the vast Asian region may house many of international football’s new paymasters, results on the field of play have remained largely disappointing. Friday’s victory by Carlos Queiroz’s men finally snapped a winless streak for Asian Football Confederation (AFC) members at World Cup final tournaments stretching all the way back to June 2010.
Since then, Asian teams had taken the field 16 times in South Africa, Brazil and Russia without once mustering a win. The most recent failure had come with Saudi Arabia’s abject defeat by hosts Russia in the present competition’s opening match on Thursday.
Prior to Iran’s latest exploit – which sees them (for now) sitting proudly on top of a Group B table that also contains Spain and Portugal – the last win by an Asian team at a World Cup had come on 24 June 2010 some 10,000 km away in the South African platinum mining town of Rustenburg.
Then, Shinji Okazaki’s clincher sealed a 3-1 win for Japan over Denmark which sent them into the knockout stages, only to lose on penalties to Paraguay.
Morocco’s gut-wrenching St Petersburg disappointment made them the second North African team to concede a late winner at Russia 2018 in a matter of hours. A Mo Salah-less Egypt had earlier gone down to Uruguay by the same score – 1-0
The defeat made a bad week for Morocco – which lost out to the United US/Canadian/Mexican bid in the hosting race for the 2026 World Cup – even worse. Hervé Renard’s team will now almost certainly have to beat either Spain or hat-trick hero Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal if they are to go through to the Round of 16.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714164641labto1714164641ofdlr1714164641owedi1714164641sni@n1714164641ewo.d1714164641ivad1714164641
