Surely Japan won’t lose against Indonesia. Don’t they just need a draw as they have better gd?
Need to win the group though to avoid South Korea probably.
Seems South Korea have crapped the bed so I can see Endo staying there
Malaysia has scored a grand total of three goals in this tournament. All against Korea today 
. 
Let Endo win it anyhow.
We’ve got decent enough cover in CM.
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Tajikistan vs UAE 
Iraq vs Jordan 
Australia vs Indonesia 
Saudi vs Korea 
Iran vs Syria 
Bahrain vs Japan 
Palestine vs Qatar 
Uzbekistan vs Thailand 
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I think the toughest tie for Japan in this would be Iran otherwise I think Endo will be there til the end. They haven’t looked too bad have Japan.
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I think Japan, Iran, and Iraq were the most impressive during the group-phase.
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Some unbelievably weak teams there.
Yeah, it’s strange, considering the vast populations available and the popularity of football across the continent. Japan and Korea have competitive teams, but there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of progress elsewhere.
Saudi’s are so so at world cups. And Iran often compete at that second level but yeah beyond that. You could mention the Aussies.
Sixty percent of the world population live in Asia, a handful of Asian players in the European leagues.
Australia through to the quarter-final. Tajikistan leading at the half-time.
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Another upset today. After Tajikistan dispatched UAE yesterday, Jordan beat Iraq 3-2.
Can we have Endo back please, Japan had him for almost a month now, that’s enough … 
Palestine leading 1-0 against Qatar 
Qatar won.
different sports for different cultures/demographics.
Well 1 billion of those live in India , that’s not a football loving country. There are pockets of the country where football is popular , but not popular enough to even threaten hockey , let alone cricket.
The Chinese football experiment seems to have fizzled out as the locals dont seem to take to the game plus the financial troubles in China.
That’s a huge chunk of the world population accounted for. There’s definite interest in the game in South East Asia but not many players produced by them. Most of the countries don’t have enough money (to develop the game) to realise the full potential , and the ones that do (Singapore/Hongkong) are too small (in terms of population) to really unearth some stars despite the money kept in the game.
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Population doesn’t matter if you don’t have the proper infrastructure. You will not have proper infrastructure without a proper leadership. Japan and Korea are the consistent performers not just in world and regional levels, but they also have a strong presence in the European leagues. They have the strongest leagues in Asia and the most stable socio-political system.
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