Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Muscat: AFC U-22 Championship winners Iraq made a winning start in their campaign to qualify for next year’s AFC U-23 Championship with a comfortable 4-1 win over Lebanon.
Aymen Hussein’s strike one minute before the interval put Iraq 1-0 up but it wasn’t until the last 18 minutes that Yahya Alwan’s side would put some distance between themselves and the Lebanese, who were looking to build on their 2-1 victory over the Maldives in their Group A opener on Monday.
Mahdi Kamil, who was part of the Iraq senior team that reached the semi-finals of the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, doubled the advantage in the 72nd minute before the Al Shorta midfielder grabbed his second and Iraq’s fourth in the 85th minute, four minutes after Amjed Waleed had weighed in with number three.
Iraq were denied a clean sheet when substitute Mahmoud Siblini, who came on at the start of the second half in place of skipper Mahdi Fahs, scored a consolation for Lebanon three minutes into stoppage time.
Ten group winners and five best second-placed teams from all groups will join hosts Qatar at the AFC U-23 Championship 2016, with January’s 16-team competition also serving as Asia’s qualifying tournament for the Olympic Games in Rio.