Iran cruise into Beach Soccer semis

Gulfnews - China and Iran qualified for the semifinals of the Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup Asian qualifiers after defeating Uzbekistan and the Philippines respectively at Jumeirah beach park on Wednesday night.

The semifinal matches were decided last night after the results of Group A and Group B matches.

UAE meet China to decide the top spot in Group A, while Japan meet Iran to decide the first place in Group B.

The first semifinal match will kick off tonight at 8 pm.

The second semifinal will be the winner of Group A with the second placed team of Group B.

The winners in the semifinals meet in the final tomorrow and the losers play for the third place.

Three teams will represent Asia in the World Cup finals in Marseille from July 17 to 27.

Iran encountered no difficulty in beating the Philippines 5-2 to reach the semis.

Although the Philippines showed better form than what they displayed against Japan, they could not beat the Iranians who played in the 2007 World Cup Finals in Brazil.

Hat-trick

The Iranian coach kept some of his key players on the bench.

"Our key players will play against Japan and in the semifinals. We gave the chance to some reserves," said Farssad Falahtzadeh.

He added that his team's dream is to play against the UAE. "We came to Dubai to clinch the title and return to Iran with the trophy. I hope we meet with UAE in the Final," he said.

Ahmadzadeh opened the scoring for Iran in the first period. Boulokbashi added the second in second period. At the beginning of the third period, Margarse reduced the deficit by scoring for the Philippines.

Boulokbashi hit the third and Ahmadzadeh scored the fourth and fifth goals to complete his hat-trick. In the last minutes Alvarez hit the second for the Philippines.

In the second match, China beat Uzbekistan 4-3 to reach the semifinals.

The Chinese kept a narrow lead, having led in the first period 2-1, the second 4-3 and it remained that way in the final whistle.

Uzbekistan could have levelled the score in the third period, but the Chinese defended well and goalkeeper Hong Zhou was in good form.

Sheng Wu, Jia Gao and Geng Han scored for China, while Sharipov, Mirahmedov and Ochilov hit the Uzbekis goals.