In the early morning of March 25, Beijing time, the penultimate round of the World Preliminary Round of 12 in The Asian Zone, Iraq won 1-0 against the United Arab Emirates, and finally ushered in the first victory of the group stage, which took 9 rounds of matches, but this three-point point is very important, looking at the results of each match in this round of Group A, the post-match standings and the last round of the schedule, we found that Iraq, known as the "national football bitter lord", miraculously turned over!
The only goal of the game came in the 53rd minute, when Hussein Aliwahi swung past the UAE goalkeeper and pushed the empty goal to win, and Iraq won a small one goal and scored all three points.
Before the game, the United Arab Emirates was the third in this group, and this campaign, iraq KO group 3rd, achieved a key victory, quite not easy, you know, the previous 8 rounds of competition, Iraq a win is difficult to find, only 5 points, even with the B group our national football team.
Of course, the situation in Group A is completely different from Group B, the top two in Group A, Iran and South Korea, are out early, the remaining 4 teams compete for third place, each team has a chance, and the point gap is not very large. Group B is Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia 3 strong teams locked in the top three in advance, the remaining three teams were eliminated in many rounds in advance.
In this round, the results of the remaining two games in Group A are as follows: South Korea 2-0 Iran, Lebanon 0-3 Syria. South Korea overtook Iran to the top of the group, losing 0-3 to Syria at the bottom due to the loss of the original fourth place Lebanon, and the third place United Arab Emirates also lost to the penultimate Iraq. As a result, the Situation in the Group A Standings has changed dramatically!
Before the final round, iraq rose to fourth with 8 points, just 1 point less than the UAE, which scored 9 points in third place, Lebanon still had 6 points and Syria 5 points. In the final round of the group stage, the United Arab Emirates wants to play south Korea, which is in full momentum, and Iraq is playing Syria at the bottom, compared with the two, Iraq is likely to be able to qualify as the third in the group and get a play-off place. Of course, the hope of reaching the World Cup through the play-offs is still slim, but at the very least, Iraq has a high probability of getting such an opportunity.