The livewire 24-year-old forward was in superb form throughout, setting up Mehdi Taremi for the Iranian opener and scoring himself to further underline his burgeoning reputation.

Azmoun’s excellence and Iran’s victory saw Carlos Queiroz’s charges grab their fourth win and fifth clean sheet at Asia’s premier event, while taking a step nearer to claiming the nation’s first Continental title since 1976.

The Iranians are now set to face Japan – albeit minus Taremi who will be suspended after picking up his second yellow card of the competition – in the semi-finals on Monday.

Introduced from the quarter-final stage, VAR first denied and then benefited Japan as the Samurai Blue stayed on track for a record-extending fifth AFC Asian Cup title.

VAR was first called into play in the 24th minute when Maya Yoshida's goal was ruled out for a handball and again in the 56th minute when Vietnam's Bùi Tien Dung was ultimately judged to have brought down Ritsu Doan.

Doan converted the spot-kick and Japan will face Islamic Republic of Iran in Monday's semi-final.

Arnold will break from his usual practice of informing his players ahead of their final training session to give himself and his coaching staff more time to make an assessment of his team in the aftermath of their penalty shootout win over Uzbekistan in the Round of 16.

The Central Asian side pushed the Socceroos to the limits in their meeting in Al Ain on Monday, with goalkeeper Maty Ryan emerging as the hero for Australia as the country progressed to the quarter-finals for the third tournament in a row.

The Italian admitted to having concerns over his side’s defensive performance, with the UAE having conceded four times in four games so far at the tournament, but he is refusing to consider adopting similar tactics deployed by Jordan and Uzbekistan in their respective meetings with the Socceroos.

Jordan defeated the Australians 1-0 in the teams’ opening game of the group phase while Uzbekistan frustrated Graham Arnold’s side throughout 120 minutes of their goalless draw in the Round of 16, which Australia eventually won via a penalty shootout.

Qatar head into the game against one of the tournament favourites having won Group E and then beating Iraq 1-0 in the Round of 16 – a run of victories that has seen them score 11 times and keep four successive clean sheets.

Despite Qatar never having progressed beyond this stage in any of their previous nine appearances at the competition, Sanchez believes his squad is adequately equipped to cope with the undoubtedly intense nature of an AFC Asian Cup quarter-final tie.

The two-time champions face Qatar in a mouth-watering quarter-final at the Zayed Sports City Stadium on Friday and Bento said what he expects to see from the Taeguk Warriors is them creating chances and putting them away.

In Qatar, the East Asians will be facing the team with the highest number of goals scored thus far in the competition and Bento said it is crucial for his team to put their chances away against Felix Sanchez's impressive side.

From the almost 1.3 million votes cast, Nguyen's sublime free-kick garnered 465,629 votes, with China PR's Wu Lei (305,806) and Islamic Republic of Iran's Saman Ghoddos (134,491) second and third respectively.

Now we turn to some of the best goals from the Round of 16, and ask you to select your favourite in our poll at the end.

As Vietnam, Islamic Republic of Iran, China PR, Japan, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Korea Republic and Qatar progressed past the last 16 of the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 we saw some stunning strikes along the way.

Here are six we picked for your consideration.