Usual suspects in the frame at Asian Cup

SYDNEY: The 17th Asian Cup finals will be the biggest in the 62-year history of the tournament but even with 24 teams battling it out, it is hard to look much beyond regional powers Iran, Japan and South Korea as potential champions.

Australia will be hoping to join that trio and Saudi Arabia as multiple winners of the continental crown as they defend the title they won on home soil four years ago.

The Socceroos triumph came at the end of a highly successful staging of a tournament that has left the United Arab Emirates much to live up to.

The Emiratis, playing hosts for a second time after 1996 when they reached the final, showed with their recent staging of FIFA’s Club World Cup, though, that there is a passion for the game that can be awoken by local success.

Al Ain’s run to the final against Real Madrid brought passionate crowds to the stadiums of Abu Dhabi and provided a welcome pre-tournament boost to a national team that has hardly set the world alight under Italian Alberto Zaccheroni.

It is fair to say, though, that Real also brought more world class foot- ballers to the Emirates than the Asian Cup will with only South Korea skipper Son Heung-min likely to register with many casual football fans outside the Asia-Pacific.

That does not mean there will not be plenty of skilful football on display as the cream of the world’s most populous continent contest the equivalent of the European Championship and Copa America.

The world’s most populous countries will both be represented but neither China nor India are expected to be around at the business end of the tournament.

The Indians would probably not have qualified without the expansion from 16 teams, while China appear to have stagnated under the guidance of Italian World Cup winner Marcello Lippi.

Under an agreement with his club Tottenham Hotspur, Heungmin will only join the fray for the third and last Group C match against Lippi’s side as well as the knockout stage.

The Taeguk Warriors should have more than enough quality to seal one of the top two spots in the group without him, though, given the other two teams in it are debutants in the shape of Kyrgyzstan and Sven Goran Eriksson’s Philippines.

South Korea, who won the first two Asian Cups and finished runners-up to Australia in 2015, look like the form team in Asia going into the tournament, having gone unbeaten in six matches under Portuguese coach Paulo Bento since their World Cup exit.

Japan, who made the last 16 in Russia before going out to a thrilling Portugal comeback, also look to have a reasonably straightforward passage having been drawn with Uzbekistan, Oman and Turkmenistan in Group F. — AFP