Defending champion Japan plays the newcomer Palestinians at Newcastle in its opening match at the Asian Cup on Monday, while Jordan takes on 2007 winner Iraq in Brisbane. Cheap Air Max 1 NZ . Heres a look at those Group D matches:JAPAN vs. PALESTINE (0700 GMT): This will be the first competitive meeting between the teams, and Japan and AC Milan midfielder Keisuke Honda is telling the defending champions to keep it simple. It is crucial that we dont make stupid mistakes. Look at the kind of heat we are going to be playing in, Honda said after Fridays training session in temperatures of nearly 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Newcastle.While Japan has a record four Asian Cup titles in the past six events, the Palestinians will be making their first tournament start after qualifying by winning the 2014 AFC Challenge Cup, keeping a clean sheet in all five of their matches.Ranked 113th in the world, the Palestinians clinched a spot for the Asian Cup with a 1-0 win over the Philippines in the Maldives last May, despite the absence of several players due to travel restrictions.To be here is a like a dream. Its like a World Cup for us, not just the players, but all of the Palestinian people, striker and leading goal scorer Ashraf Al Fawaghra, better known as Numan, said. Through football matches we will try to send a message to the world that we are Palestinian, we are human, we want to play football.__JORDAN vs. IRAQ (0900 GMT): Jordan has won just one of its previous 10 matches against 2007 champion Iraq, drawing twice and losing seven. Iraq has also failed to score more than one goal in each of its last six Asian Cup matches, scoring four in total, and the side wont be helped by Jordans strong defensive record — the Jordanians conceded just three goals in six qualification matches for this tournament.Iraq also comes into the Asian Cup having lost three matches in qualifying — the most of any of the 16 teams who made it to Australia — but can look to midfielder Younis Mahmoud for some inspiration from eight years ago. The captain scored a 73rd-minute header in the Asian Cup final to give Iraq its 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia and the title. Mahmoud, 31, had been without a club for the past year but was an over-age player at the Asian Games in September, scoring four times as Iraq finished third. After that performance, new coach Radhi Shenaishil recalled him for the Asian Cup.With Japan expected to beat Palestine on Monday, the match could decide who joins the reigning champions in the last eight. Air Max 1 Clearance Sale . Huntelaar also had a penalty saved by Wolfsburg goalkeeper Diego Benaglio. The two goals brought Huntelaars total for the season to 18, level with Bayern Munichs Mario Gomez for most in the league. Air Max 1 Clearance NZ . Canada wasnt in the game from the outset. Head coach Dan Church left Calgary in the morning without addressing the players. He told The Canadian Press he felt the organization lacked confidence in his ability to defend the Olympic gold medal in February. http://www.airmax1nz.com/ . - Washington Redskins tight end Fred Davis said Wednesday hes "nodded off" during meetings, but he said its something every player does.TORONTO – High above the ice, while practice took place on Thursday afternoon in Toronto, stood Maple Leafs general manager Dave Nonis. He watched his team work through various drills, hash out lingering points of confusion and prepare for the latest biggest game of the year - a Friday clash with the Philadelphia Flyers. Nonis can do nothing, however, to affect the fortunes of his skidding team at this very late stage in the season, one tumbling precariously close to another late-season collapse. "Eight games left," said Phil Kessel, shortly before departure to Philadelphia. "Weve got to win some games and get in the playoffs here." "This is desperation time," Nazem Kadri added. "Were playing for our lives, so weve got to go start acting like it." It was exactly two years ago that the 18-wheeler of 2012 officially crashed for good. Losing for a stunning 19th time in 24 games against the Carolina Hurricanes on a late March night, the Leafs were eliminated from the postseason, the culmination of an epic unraveling that would cost Ron Wilson his job. Can they avoid a similar and yet perhaps more stinging fate this time around? The thought would have been almost unthinkable only two weeks earlier, but with six straight losses - all in regulation - and not a single point gained, the Leafs are indeed facing that reality. With a blink or two of the eye, theyve been passed by seven teams, now trailing the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets for the final two wild card positions, and are in danger of fumbling away a second-straight trip to the postseason. Aspirations of capturing second spot in the Atlantic Division and home-ice advantage in the first round have been replaced by simply making it outright. The shift has been stunning. "I know right now it seems like were at a low point, but we will come through it," said captain Dion Phaneuf, speaking after a near 90-minute practice in Toronto, his performance and subsequent absence afterward a point of much consternation just a couple days earlier. "Im not going to stand here and say that weve played well. We havent. We havent won games, but theres been stretches that weve done some good things, we just havent found a way to win a game and were going to have to do that Friday." The pressure to do so has never been higher. At some point, the pit of despair becomes just too deep to dig out of, the snowball too large to stop from rolling. That was the case for the club in 2012. Cheap Nike Air Max 1 Trainers. Four straight early February losses rapidly morphed into nine of 10, a souring fan-base and the sudden dismissal of Wilson. Things would get no better in the early days of Carlyles tenure with 10 more losses in the next 14 games, including the aforementioned knockout blow on March 27. "Theres pressure in any situation like this," said Kessel, "[but] weve just got to bounce back. If we can get a couple wins here, it would be positive for our group. Weve just got to keep going then." Fear of it all slipping away has seemingly seeped in. Head coach Randy Carlyle observed "tenseness" in the early stages of Tuesdays loss to St. Louis, pushing his club to be more assertive against Philadelphia, currently third in the Metropolitan Division - three points ahead of Toronto. "If youre going to stand there and youre in a street fight and youre not going to move, youre going to allow somebody to swing away, youre going to get hit," said Carlyle. "But if you move and try to avoid the hit and do what you do youre not going to get hit as many times, simple as that." Starts have become the most obvious foe to success during the two-week slide, early and often deep deficits too much to overcome. "So we have to move ourselves," said Carlyle. "We have to move our feet, we have to continue to move the puck effectively, we have to skate … Those are the things that we have to correct and we have to correct it for [Friday] night." "Were starting the games terrible," Kessel said. "Were getting down a couple goals. Theyre out-playing us the first half of the game and then all of a sudden we wake up and we come [back] and its just too late." The same could be said of their playoff fortunes. A collapse under these circumstances might pale in comparison to 2012, given their comfortable state with just weeks to go - they were up three points on the Montreal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning as recently as two weeks ago, now trailing both by a wide margin - and the heightened expectations of a club seemingly on the rise. Its a sting they wont want to experience again. "It snowballed on us," Phaneuf said after that season-sealing loss to Carolina two years ago. "We lost a lot of tight games and we just could not recover or find a way out of it as a group." Will they this time around time around? The answer will come soon enough. China NFL Jerseys Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys NFL Jerseys Cheap Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap Basketball Jerseys Online Stitched Hockey Jerseys Wholesale Baseball Jerseys Football Jerseys Outlet College Jerseys For Sale Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys For Sale Wholesale NFL Jerseys ' ' '