The routs rolled across the world’s biggest continent.

Iraq 5, Chinese Taipei 1.

South Korea 8, Laos 0.

Iran 6, Guam 0.

UAE 10, Malaysia 0.

Qatar 15, Bhutan 0.

And that last one eclipsed a couple more blowouts that came slightly later: Kuwait 9, Myanmar 0, and Saudi Arabia 7, East Timor 0.

At the end of the day, the higher-ranked home teams had outscored the visitors by an astonishing 73-3 and Asian qualifying for the 2018 World Cup was made to look silly — by the Asian Football Confederation honchos who agreed to go ahead with a new and deeply flawed system.

The problem is this:

The AFC went to the group phase far too early — with 40 of the 46 nations competing for a place at Russia 2018 still alive.

Asia is not home to any of the world’s soccer powers, but it does have a huge gap between the 18-20 competent sides and the 20-plus at the other extreme. (Check the Fifa rankings; and take my word for it that the gulf between being 120 or so … and being 150 or worse … is a big one.)

Four years ago, the confederation used a system of two-leg (one at home, one on the road) matchups that produced a quick winner, and winnowed out the weak quite efficiently.

At this point in 2011 only 20 teams were left, instead of the 40 we have this time. (Well, 39, since Fifa suspended Indonesia).

Four years ago, only two of the teams in the five groups of four teams were hopelessly over-matched, Singapore and Indonesia.

This time, eight groups of five is an invitation to blowouts, and we got a batch of them today.

September 3 always was at risk of producing some very ugly results, because it pitted the two highest-ranked teams in each group against the two lowest-ranked teams, and the little guys were on the road, too.

Aggregate final score? 73-3.

North Korea not only did well, it won, defeating Bahrain 1-0 in a sort of upset. (North Korea is strange, as you may have heard, and its teams can be quite competent, at time, and quite awful, at others.)

Hong Kong held China to a scoreless draw, as did Kyrgyzstan at Jordan.

And war-racked Yemen lost only 1-0 to Uzbekistan, and Singapore held Syria (though the latter has its own deep troubles) to a 1-0 game, too.

After that? Varieties of routs.

I watched the UAE’s smushing of Malaysia. The Emiratis are pretty good, and have a shot at making the 2018 World Cup, but Malaysia arrived with what seemed the worst national team I have ever seen. Technically primitive, strategically hopeless, physical overwhelmed. But, apparently, Bhutan was even worse, as the 15-0 Qatar blitz suggests. (Bhutan was ranked 209, and last, by Fifa, until it beat Sri Lanka in the first round of 2018 qualifying, a home-and-away.)

This didn’t have to happen, of course. If the AFC had retained the system from four years ago, most of the teams who were nuked tonight would not have been playing in the group phases.

We may not see anything like 73-3 again, but the potential for more horrible routs is out there. Cambodia is not going to suddenly get better. Neither will Myanmar and Bangladesh, et al.

Plus, this group stage has a long ways to run. The bottom feeders have five more matches to play, and they stretch into March.

The date to circle on your calendar, if you enjoy train wrecks, is November 17.

That’s the day when the same matchups will unfold, with the only difference being the little guys get to play at home.

Let’s hope we see more competitive games. We can hardly see worse.