South Asian Business news and information

You already know that Asian Cup Football 2007 will kick off from July7, 2007 and the tournament will be co-hosted by four countries- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. If you go for seeking the favorite, you will find a long list as there are number of names including Australia, Japan, South Korea China, and Iran. In Group C, China and Iran seem to be the hot favorites to advance in the next round as the other two teams Malaysia and Uzbekistan are still minnows in Asian football.

Iran is now one of the regular finalists of world cup football from Asia. Their main strength is that they have some talented players who are regularly playing in the European league and are always exposed to competitive football. To name a few, Andranik Teymourian of Bolton Wanderers, Eintracht Frankfurt's Mehdi Mahdavikia, Rahmen Razaei of Livorno ect and Ali Karimi of Bayern Munich.

It is true that in the recent past Chinese football has gone through a bad time and its coach Zhu Guanghu is under a huge pressure because of the continuous bad performance of the team. However, it is impossible to keep China of the favorite’s list in this group.

People's Daily Online reported:

No one can underestimate Iran's power. They boast a number of Europe-based players like Bolton Wanderers midfielder Andranik Teymourian, Eintracht Frankfurt's Mehdi Mahdavikia, Livorno defender Rahmen Razaei, Hannover striker Vahid Hashemian and Bayern Munich's Ali Karimi. Although Iran had a disappointing World Cup tour in Germany 2006, they can ease through the Asian Cup group stage without big problem.

China have met some trouble recently. Head coach Zhu Guanghu has been under heavy fire from the media and fans, as the team showed bad form in a series of warm-up matches, and seemed to backslide obviously under his guidance. Zhu has a formidable task to lead the runners-up of 2004 at least to the semi-finals at this year's championship.

I think both Iran and China have the capability to win the cup but as far as I am concerned, Australia will through a big challenge for the Asian teams this time.