HO CHI MINH CITY: Winning the Asian futsal title has become a habit with Iran and on Saturday they clinched it again for the seventh year in a row at the Phu Tho Stadium here.

And, yet again at the unflattering end of the 2-0 scoreline in the final of the AFC Futsal Championship stood perennial bridesmaids Japan, who were unable to break a four-year-long jinx during which they have come up short time and again against Team Melli.

Iranian marksman Vahid Shamsaee has been pivotal in Team Melli’s many wins over the years and on Saturday it was only fitting that he opened the scoring in the third minute, taking his tournament goal tally as top scorer to 23. Mohsen Zarei doubled the advantage five minutes later. Iran have now mastered their Japanese rivals in no less than four championship finals, starting from 2002. The victory margin, however, has been diminishing over the years – a pointer to the rapidly improving skills of the Japanese. In 2002, Iran won 6-0 and a year later they retained the title 6-4. But last year they were pushed all the way by the Japanese and just managed to win 5-3.

The Iranian team this year is arguably the weakest ever and this showed in the way their awesome tournament win streak of six years in which they had not lost or drawn a single match was ended by Japan earlier in the group rounds. But it was Japan who gave a helping hand to Iran by dramatically defeating Thailand in the knockout stage. Had Japan drawn with Thailand, Iran would have been ousted from the tournament. Iran coach Jurandir Azeredo felt that his team converted more chances and this made the difference. “The level of difficulty was the same as in the last match against Japan. But we converted more chances today,” said Jurandir. “Japan are a very strong team but we were in excellent physical and mental shape.” Japanese coach Sapo did not attend the post-match press conference. AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam distributed the prizes to the winners and runners-up.