With the opportunity of passing rivals South Korea for the group lead, the North Korea were unable to gather any sort of offense and had to settle for one point, the result of a scoreless draw against a determined Turkmenistan defense. North Korea and South Korea are still tied for first in the group after the third round of matches.Thailand were in desperate need of a win against Bahrain in Bangkok, especially with two losses to open Round Three of Asian qualifying. After going down a goal in the twenty-second minute, the Thais answered the challenge within three minutes. Again, Bahrain pushed ahead but the Thais notched the score at two apiece heading into the locker room. A goal in the second half broke the deadlock, and the visiting Bahrainis won the match and have the maximum of nine points heading into their home match against the same Thais later this week. The Thais have no points and are all but dead with only three matches left to play.
“We were under pressure, we made mistakes, and it nearly cost us the game,” explained Bahrain’s coach Milan Macala. “I’m happy with three points; that’s all I wanted. I don’t care how we got them.”
"I felt a sense of crisis after we lost to Bahrain, so we must pile up the points as soon as possible." – Shunsuke Nakamura, Japanese striker
Japan grabbed an 1-0 halftime lead at home in the rain of Yokohama against the Omanis, and the play of Nakamura made it stand up at the finish. He set up the next goal with a hockey assist and then finished off the scoring with a bullet shot. The physical 3-0 win (five yellows cards were flashed, including three to Oman) has Japan back on track after their upset loss to Bahrain in their previous qualifier. The importance of the early goal was not lost on Japanese coach Takeshi Okada. "We got pretty good rhythm from the beginning. The early first goal made it a bit easier for us, but the early goal in the second half made us comfortable." Nakamura also spoke about the match. “We put Oman under pressure well as a team and opened them up with individual skill. That will be the key to winning tight games.” Japan have six points and trail Bahrain by three heading into their fourth game later this week.
Singapore were playing in the biggest game in their history and their nerves showed. A bunch of poor mistakes gave the Uzbeks one-goal leads, but back Singapore gamely tied the game each time. The 2-2 tie turned into a blowout, however, as visiting Uzbekistan scored four straight goals, including the first three for a 5-2 before the halftime whistle. A late for Singapore made the score a more respectable 6-3, but Uzbekistan added one more for the 7-3 and took full points. Uzbekistan now top group D with nine points, three clear of Saudi Arabia.
Radojko Avarmovic spoke about his team’s loss. “If anybody had told me before the game we would score three goals against Uzbekistan, I would be very happy, but today the defense looked like it didn’t exist.”
"We achieved what we came here for and we will keep moving." - Bruno Metso, coach of United Arab Emirates
What they wanted was a draw in Iran, and they achieved this despite making no serious rushes on the Iranian goal. Iran could not mount a strong enough attack to muster more than one decent scoring chance, which was denied by the Emirates’ goalie. Five yellow cards were passed around and the visitor grabbed three of them. The scoreless draw means that the United Arab Emirates have the joint group lead with five points, along with Syria. Iran are underperforming with three points, and Kuwait have only one. Sadly, although Iran have yet to lose, they are going to be on their way out of qualifying if they do not engineer a turnaround in the next three matches.
China did not seem to be too concerned about offense when they visited Doha to take on Qatar near the searing heat of the Persian Gulf. This was shown by their decision to start six defenders and by their willingness to take four yellow cards; still, Qatar had the best chance to score when a header knocked a crossbar on the Chinese goal near the end of the first half. All China was able to garner were three yellow cards from the referee. Still, China will be happy with the scoreless draw if they take advantage of home-field advantage and defeat Qatar in the return game later this week. Australia is in front of Group A with seven points. Qatar are second with four and China are in third position with three points from three draws. Iraq round out the group with one.
With the draw between the top two teams in their group having been confirmed, the Syrians would have known in their locker room at halftime that a win against Kuwait would shoot them into a surprising first-place tie after the first three matches of Round Three. The scoreless draw was broken by the Syrians as they carved out a 1-0 victory which was unremarkable other than the fact that it placed Syria ahead of Iran in the group tables and left Syria in the driver’s seat to advance to Round Four. This matched featured, you guessed it, five yellow cards, with three going to Syria.
The Lebanese scored the first goal in the match with less than five minutes to go in the first half. Unfortunately for Lebanon, this seemed to light the fire under the Saudis, who had tied the game by halftime. A flurry of three second-half goals gave Saudi Arabia a large 4-1 victory and keep them in second place behind Uzbekistan in the table for Group D.
Goal scorers:
Bahrain: Isa 22; Latif 35; Mohamed Adnan 55
Thailand: Chaikamdee 26; Winothai 45
Japan: Nakazawa 10; Ozubo 22; S. Nakamura 49
Uzbekistan: Kapadze 10; Karpenko 21; Djeparov 34, 44; Denisov 42; Ibragimov 62; Shatskikh 88
Singapore: Duric 12; Fahrudin 31 PK; Wilkinson 73
Syria: Alhoussain 52
Saudi Arabia: Al Qahtani 44, 90; Hawsawi 62; Tukar 82
Lebanon: El Ali 42
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