TEHRAN, 26 March 2005 — Iran made sure their World Cup dream was kept on track yesterday with a convincing 2-1 home win against top Asian rivals Japan, largely thanks to their trio of Bundesliga-based stars.
Iran was largely dominant throughout the first half, and had the visitors on the defensive early through a series of strong chances from Mehdi Mahdavikia of SV Hamburg, Kaiserslautern’s Fereydoun Zandi and Vahid Hashemian of Bayern Munich. With only the top two teams in each group qualifying automatically for next year’s tournament in Germany, Japan will now be under pressure to win their home game, against Bahrain, at the Saitama stadium near Tokyo on March 30.
Bahrain, who beat North Korea 2-1 earlier in the day, now share the group lead with Iran. Both teams are on four points, while Japan are in third with three and North Korea fourth on no points. Iran were given plenty of vocal support for their second group match, with 100,000 supporters in the Azadi stadium hoping for goals after Iran’s last qualifier, away to Bahrain last month, ended in a scrappy goalless draw.
Iran opened the scoring in the 24th minute after Hashemian picked up a free kick from Mahdavikia deep into the Japanese box and the Bayern Munich forward hit home past Japan’s scrappy defence.
Japan — dogged by injury and a reported pre-match bust-up over tactics — managed to seize the initiative in the second half of their awkward assignment. Several chances for the visitors followed, and with Iran back under pressure, Takashi Fukunishi was eventually able to find a gap to level the scores from a cross into the Iranian box in the 65th minute. Hashemian hit home his second of the match and closed the scoring by whisking into the Japanese box and getting his head behind a well-placed long cross from Ali Karimi on the right wing.
