U-23 football team leaves for camp in Oman

AMMAN — Jordan’s U-23 squad plays Oman in Muscat on Thursday as part of a training camp in preparation for qualifiers for the 3rd Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-23 Championship in 2018.

Jordan is set to meet Oman again on June 11 in their second encounter with the July 19-24 qualifiers nearly a month away. 

The team was drawn in Group E with Tajikistan, Bangladesh, and host Palestine as 40 teams playing in 10 groups with the top team from each group, in addition to the top five second place teams, will move to the championship finals.

Head coach Iain Brunskill’s line-up played an eight-nation tournament in Dubai earlier this year where they finished third after they beat Singapore 2-0, held China 0-0, lost 1-0 to the UAE before beating Malaysia 4-0. 

In 2016, Jordan was eliminated from the quarterfinals of the 2016 AFC U-23 Championship in Qatar and failed to make it to the top four and a possible Olympic slot as the continent’s top three advanced to the Rio Olympic Games football tournament later won by Brazil.

In the inaugural AFC U-22 Championship in 2014, Jordan took third place when they beat South Korea while Iraq won the title after defeating Saudi Arabia.

In 2015, Jordan’s U-23 squad was eliminated from the 1st West Asian U-23 Championship and in 2014 the line-up represented Jordan at the Asian Games where they made to the quarter-finals.

The Kingdom’s younger squads are also training for their respective Asian qualifiers. The U-19 team, which qualified to the Asian Championship four times and previously reached the FIFA Youth World Cup in Canada in 2007, was last eliminated from the qualifying rounds of the 2016 Championship. This year, they are set to play in Group E alongside Syria, Palestine and hosts Iran.

Jordan finished fourth in 2006, but exited the group stages in 2008 and 2010 and reached the quarters in 2012. Jordan failed to qualify to the 2014 championship. 

Similarly, the U-16 team is now preparing for their Asian qualifiers in which they will play in Group A alongside hosts Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Bahrain and Sri Lanka. In 2015, the U-16 squad failed to advance to the 2016 AFC U-16 Asian Championship.