By Michael Church
HONG KONG (Reuters) -Japan handed Saudi Arabia a 2-0 defeat in Jeddah on Thursday as Hajime Moriyasu’s side continued their march towards the World Cup with a third consecutive win in Asian qualifying that moves the Samurai Blue five points clear at the top of Group C.
Daichi Kamada’s close range finish put the Japanese in front in the 14th minute of a physical first half and substitute Koki Ogawa headed in Junya Ito’s corner nine minutes from time to secure the points.
The win moves Moriyasu’s onto nine points and the Japanese have now scored 14 times in three games without conceding as they move closer to securing an eighth consecutive World Cup appearance.
Japan have pulled clear of a chasing pack led by the Australians, who moved ahead of Saudi Arabia on goal difference after a 3-1 win in Adelaide over China in Tony Popovic’s first game since replacing Graham Arnold as coach last month.
Craig Goodwin powered home a long-range strike in the 53rd minute after setting up Australia’s first goal just before halftime with a free kick that was headed in by Lewis Miller to cancel out Xie Wenneng’s opener.
Nishan Velupillay made sure of the win on his international debut in injury time.
Indonesia, meanwhile, were denied victory by hosts Bahrain deep into stoppage time when Mohamed Marhoon scored his second of the game to earn his side a 2-2 draw with the Southeast Asians, who have now drawn their last three matches.
South Korea defeated Jordan 2-0 in Amman to move top of Group B as goals from Lee Jae-sung and Oh Hyeong-gu gave coach Hong Myung-bo his second win in a row and lifted the Koreans on to seven points from three matches.
A header from Lee gave South Korea, missing injured captain Son Heung-min, the lead in the 38th minute and Oh doubled the advantage 23 minutes into the second half when he wrong-footed Yazeed Abulaila to score from inside the area.
Iraq joined the Koreans on seven points and trail on goal-difference as Aymen Hussein’s left-foot shot in the 31st minute secured Jesus Casas’ team a 1-0 win over Palestine.
Oman, meanwhile, eased to a 4-0 win over Kuwait in Muscat to move off the bottom of Group B with Abdulrahman Al Mushaifri scoring twice for Rashid Jabar’s side.
In Group A, Uzbekistan were unable to find a way past Iran’s defence despite the visitors having only 10 players for the final 35 minutes of their top-of-the-table clash as they played out a 0-0 draw in Tashkent.
Defender Saleh Hardani was shown a red card 10 minutes into the second half for a dangerous tackle on Uzbekistan captain Eldor Shomurodov.
Asian champions Qatar won their first game of the third round with a 3-1 victory over Kyrgyzstan to draw level with the United Arab Emirates on four points as Paulo Bento’s side were held to a 1-1 draw by North Korea.
The top two in each group advance automatically to the World Cup while the third and fourth-placed sides go into another round of preliminaries with the bottom two finishers eliminated.
(Reporting by Michael Church, additional reporting by Ian Ransom, Editing by Ed Osmond and Pritha Sarkar)
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