JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 12 (Asia Free Press): Sami Al-Naji’s first-half brace helped Saudi Arabia defeat China 3-2 in the final round of the ‘FIFA Qatar 2022 World Cup’ – Asian Zone qualifiers in Jeddah on Tuesday, reported Xinhua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China’s football team was outclassed by Australia and Japan in their first two games and notched up their first win over Vietnam 3-2 by an injury-time winner. Vietnam remains rooted to the bottom of the group after four rounds of matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saudi Arabia opened the scoring in the 15th minute when Sami Al-Naji netted home with a right-footed shot to the bottom right corner. The 24-year-old scored another goal in the 38th minute from a very close range to the centre of the goal on Sultan Al-Ghannam’s cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the restart, China pulled back the score on 1-2 with Luo Guofu’s right-footed shot from the left side of the box in the 46th minute. But Feras Al-Brikan tapped in the ball to put Saudi Arabia 3-1 ahead in the 72nd minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China’s Wu Xi fired home with a left-footed shot from outside the box in the 87th minute to help China close the scoring again on 2-3 but failed to turn the game around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Included China in the Group B of the final round with Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Vietnam. The top two from both six-team groups qualify for the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar automatically. The two third-placed teams will then face each other in a two-legged playoff, with the winner of that tie entering an intercontinental playoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other Asian Zone qualifiers on Tuesday included Japan, which edged past Australia 2-1, while Vietnam lost 1-3 to Oman.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 12 (Asia Free Press): Sami Al-Naji’s first-half brace helped Saudi Arabia defeat China 3-2 in the final round of the ‘FIFA Qatar 2022 World Cup’ – Asian Zone qualifiers in Jeddah on Tuesday, reported Xinhua. China’s football team was outclassed by Australia and Japan in their first two games and notched […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[192,759,735,775,774,689,706],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-china","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-qatar","tag-qualifiers","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}