Women’s Football League kicks off

AMMAN — The 9th edition of the Women’s Football League kicks off Friday with only four teams, including seven-time League champs Shabab Urdun and Amman Club, who only won once, in addition to Orthodox and Istiqlal. 

The last-placed team will be relegated as the competition will be cut short and played in a two-leg format to allow the regrouping of the national team for Asian and Olympic qualifiers.

Players only recently rejoined their teams after they played Asian qualifiers, causing team coaches and officials to express dissatisfaction as they noted their teams regrouped too late with national team players on duty up to last month.

The women’s national team went up two spots to 54th in the latest FIFA World Rankings. The team is leading Arab teams and 11th in the Asian continent. The latest ranking comes after the squad topped Asian Group A qualifiers and reached Round 2 of the qualifiers — the first phase of the qualifying journey to the 2016 Summer Olympics football tournament.

Jordan beat Uzbekistan 2-0, Hong Kong 1-0 and Palestine 6-0. Group leaders will join Vietnam and Thailand in Round 2, from which the top team will move to Round 3 to play the top-five seeded teams — Japan, Australia, South Korea, North Korea and China — which eventually qualifies the top two to represent Asia at the Olympic Games.

It is Jordan’s second time in the qualifiers after the 2012 London Olympic qualifiers when they advanced to
Round 2. 

Team officials hope the squad will make up for a disappointing 2014 season when the senior women’s team exited Round 1 of the 2014 Asian Games and similarly exited the Round 1 of their first AFC 2014 Women’s Asian Cup where they were also the only Arab team to have ever qualified. The squad is reigning West Asian champs after winning the title with Iran, Lebanon and the UAE missing the event last year.

In age divisions, the U-19 team last year failed to repeat their 2007 qualification to the AFC U-19 Women’s Championship which eventually qualifies the top three teams to the 2016 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup. The U-16 team also failed to qualify to the 2015 AFC U-16 Women’s Championship after qualifying in 2013. 

Jordanian women’s football team has progressively made its mark in the continent. In 2006, Jordan was the first Arab team to qualify to the 2007 AFC U-19 Women’s Championship finals.