Sports

AMMAN — The all awaited Wihdat-Faisali match is among the highlights for this week’s matches as Week 8 of the 63rd Jordan Professional League starts on Thursday.

The league was on break for the past 10 days allowing the national team to play two friendlies in which they lost by 1-0 to both South Korea and Estonia as the squad prepares for the 2015 Asian Cup.

Fans of both teams anticipate much excitement as it will be the 76th encounter between the teams. Wihdat has won 27, Faisali 26 and they tied in 22 matches. One match, won by Wihdat, was later taken off the records when the league was discontinued in 1998. Wihdat have scored 73 goals and Faisali 69.

Saturday’s match will be a chance for Wihdat to further boost their lead after they beat Baqaa 1-0. Faisali are fourth after a 1-0 win over third-placed Jazira.

Ramtha lost their shared lead with Wihdat after they were held 1-1 by former champs Shabab Urdun. They will play Baqaa who have dropped to tenth. 

Hussein are up to sixth place after a 2-0 win over Ahli. They will play Ittihad Ramtha, who are last after a 1-0 defeat to That Ras. Sarih are up to 7th spot after a 2-1 win over Manshieh. They will play Shabab Urdun who have been dropping in the standings.

Wihdat’s Mahmoud Zaatara and Ramtha’s Rakan Khalidi top the scorers list with five goals each.

Wihdat won the first major competition of the 2014/15 football season after they beat Baqaa 2-0 in the 32nd Super Cup.

Last season, Wihdat won the Jordan Professional League for the 13th time, and beat Baqaa to win the Jordan Cup while Shabab Urdun beat That Ras to win the Super Cup. The Jordan Football Association Shield was not held.

AMMAN — The season’s first basketball competition ends on Thursday when Applied Science University (ASU) plays Ittihad Schools for the Jordan Cup title.

The knockout competition saw Riyadi lose to Ittihad 78-77 in the semis as Orthodoxi lost 92-65 to ASU.

Riyadi had eliminated Kufr Youba, Ittihad ousted Jalil, Orthodoxi beat Ashrafieh and ASU eliminated Gazzet Hashem.

The tournament is a good warm-up for teams ahead of the Premier Basketball League as teams scramble to finalise their line-ups and sign import players. 

Observers point to a regression that negatively affected the basketball scene in the past few years and hope players and fans will return to the courts and help bring the zeal of competition to Jordan’s second most popular sport.

Last season, ASU won the league title for the second consecutive and fourth time when they beat Ittihad 3-1 in the best-of-five finals. Riyadi won third place after beating Kulieh 2-0 in the best-of-three play-offs.

Riyadi beat then league champs Orthodoxi to win the inaugural Jordan Cup in 2002 following which Zain (formerly Fastlink) won the title for four consecutive seasons. Then Orthodoxi snatched the 2007/08 title before Zain won again in 2008/09, ASU in 2010/11 and Riyadi in 2012.

AMMAN — Jordan’s final chance for glory at the 4th Asian Beach Games will get under way in Phuket, Thailand, on Thursday with two ambitious Muay Thai fighters confident of making the Kingdom proud, according to a statement from the Jordan Olympic Committee.

Mohammed Al Barri will represent Jordan in the 81kg category while Mohammad Salameh competes in the 75kg, with both fighters believing of making an impression in the home of the sport.

“My ambition is to one day become a world champion in this sport,” 22-year-old Barri, who is a soldier from Irbid and started his sporting career as a boxer, was quoted as saying in the statement.

“Boxing was my passion but then Muay Thai coach Khald Al Zaqzouq encouraged me to switch sports and I have not looked back! I am determined to do well here in the Beach Games to show that I am capable of becoming one of the world’s best.”

Salameh, 25, from Karak, mixes brains with brawn by splitting his time between studying accountancy in university and training for Muay Thai. He also gives a lot back to the sport by training the next generation of fighters.

“I started this sport way back when I was 12 so I have experienced how it can help a young man develop,” he said. “I would love to become a professional Muay Thai fighter one day but for the moment I must put in a strong performance here. I told my coach that I would only come here to win a medal for Jordan and I am focused 100 per cent on this,” Salameh said in the statement.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Breaking from the tradition of awarding the Olympics only to a single host city, the IOC is opening the door to possible wider bids — including bids from an entire country, joint bids from more than one city and even the possibility of events held in more than one country.

The possibility of new types of bids was among the 40 recommendations released Tuesday as part of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach’s reform agenda, his drive to make the bidding process and the games themselves more attractive and less costly.

“We want to create more diversity in the candidatures,” Bach told a small group of reporters at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”

Bach’s proposals also include scrapping the current limit of 28 sports for the Summer Games to allow for new events to come in while maintaining a limit of 10,500 athletes and 310 medal events. For the Winter Games, the limit is 2,900 athletes and 100 medal events.

The proposals would allow host cities to propose the inclusion of one or more events for their games — a move which would clear the way for baseball and softball to be included in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Both sports were dropped from the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing Games, but are highly popular in Japan.

The package also includes measures for revamping the bid process to make it more of a partnership with candidates, creating an Olympic television channel, and including language on non-discrimination on sexual orientation in the Olympic Charter and host city contract.

The proposals also call for the appointment of an IOC “compliance officer” on ethics matters and a slight tweak to the 70-year age limit for IOC members. A member’s term could be extended to the age of 74 if approved by the IOC, with no more than five cases at a time.

The reforms, called “Olympic Agenda 2020”, will be put to a vote by the full IOC at a special session in Monaco on December 8-9.
Barring any surprise, most or all the recommendations are expected to be passed.

“These 40 recommendations are like a jigsaw puzzle,” Bach said at the Olympic Museum. “The full picture is an IOC that safeguards the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and strengthens sport in society.”

Under the proposals, the IOC will allow “the organisation of entire sports and disciplines outside the host city or, in exceptional cases, outside the host country notably for reasons of geography and sustainability”.

That would be a first for the Summer Games. The IOC rules already allow for events to be held in a bordering country for the Winter Games.

“For Winter Games, if two countries are sharing a mountain, why not share a bid?” Bach said. “If you also have a city or region that can provide 95 per cent of the facilities and 5 per cent is missing, why not to open the door for them?”

In the Summer Olympics, some events — such as sailing and many of the preliminary-round football matches — are already held outside host cities. But Bach said the IOC is now ready to open the chance for country-wide and joint bids.

“In the Summer Games, it’s more about small or neighbouring countries where you have distances which are manageable and feasible,” he said. “It also could be in one country. We want to have more diversity, to give smaller countries the opportunity to organise games.”

There has been a precedent for holding events outside the host country. Because of quarantine laws in Australia, the equestrian competition for the 1952 Melbourne Olympics was held in Stockholm.

Bach stressed, however, that the principle remains that there should be a “main organising city” with an athletes village that serves as the centre of the Olympic experience.

“We want to preserve the Olympic spirit,” he said. “To have the central Olympic Village and to have the athletes together, this is the core to our philosophy. We do not want to see this destroyed. We want the games with the unity of time, place and action which is part of the uniqueness of the Olympic Games.”

GENEVA — A Qatari whistle-blower has lodged a complaint about her treatment in the World Cup bid corruption report by FIFA’s judge, and an Australian woman who gave evidence during the investigation has complained about the denigration of the pair.

Former Qatar bid worker Phaedra Almajid told The Associated Press on Monday that she wrote to FIFA prosecutor Michael Garcia about Judge Joachim Eckert breaching her right to witness confidentiality. It was sent late Sunday to the e-mail address at the Manhattan law firm where Garcia is a partner.

In the letter of complaint, which has been seen by the AP, she wrote that Eckert “falsely discredits me in order to support his indefensible conclusion that the December 2010 bidding was wholly acceptable.”

Bonita Mersiades, who worked on Australia’s bid for the 2022 World Cup and gave evidence to Garcia under the condition of anonymity, added to the criticism in an article for The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.

“It says much about FIFA and those inside their tent that they felt it necessary to engage in a denigration of the two women who had been courageous enough to say something,” Mersiades wrote. “It is one thing to discount our discussions and the evidence — an investigator is entitled to do that — but it is extraordinary to single out two individuals and detail [mostly incorrectly] the contact with Mike Garcia, especially when we were assured in writing and in person that our dealings with him were confidential.”

Almajid and Mersiades’ protests adds to a chaotic response since Thursday when FIFA released Eckert’s summary of the Garcia investigation into corruption in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding contests won by Russia and Qatar, respectively.

Both Russia and Qatar have always denied any wrong-doing.

Garcia himself said his work was misrepresented by Eckert and appealed to FIFA. He is challenging the German judge’s decision to close the case because “problematic” wrong-doing by candidates was “of limited scope” and did not justify reviewing the votes by FIFA’s executive committee.

Almajid gave evidence to Garcia alleging wrong-doing by Qatar’s bid when she was its head of international media until early 2010.

She said Eckert’s report denounced her as unreliable in a “crude, cynical and fundamentally erroneous” summary of her cooperation.

“My cooperation was based on your promise of confidentiality,” Almajid wrote to Garcia.

Though not named by Eckert in his 42-page document, Almajid was easily identified — in a section covering Qatar titled “Role and Relevance of a “Whistleblower” — from her previous public statements. She was named in a July 2011 statement in which she retracted her claims of corruption, but later said she was coerced to do so by Qatari bid officials.

Almajid’s most serious allegation was aired by a British parliamentary committee in May 2011, that African members of FIFA’s ruling board were paid $1.5 million to vote for Qatar in a five-nation contest.

She also made allegations to Garcia of Qatar’s $1.8 million sponsorship of an African football meeting in Angola in 2010, and how the Aspire Academy in Doha was used to further the emirate’s campaign.

Still, Eckert wrote that Garcia’s investigation report concluded that “it appeared that the [whistle-blower] source has altered evidence to support its allegations.”

Almajid said speaking out had jeopardised the safety of herself and her two sons.

“I have taken great personal risks to stand up for the truth in a highly politicised atmosphere,” she wrote to Garcia. “However, I have found myself betrayed and denigrated for being courageous enough to come forward with critical information.”

Garcia must now decide whether to use Almajid’s complaint to prosecute a case against his ethics committee co-chairman for unethical behaviour.

Mersiades, who has written but not yet published a book on her experience during the World Cup bid, said she was asked to participate in Garcia’s investigations, and “felt the responsible thing to do was to share with him what I knew and what I had observed; I explained to him up front that I had no smoking gun but lines of inquiry that might be useful, depending on what else he learned”.

Eckert and Garcia are scheduled to meet this week for talks to resolve their rift. They should also cooperate on ongoing prosecutions against individual FIFA voters.

AMMAN — Despite some strong performances at the Asian Beach Games in Phuket, Thailand, the Jordan women’s handball team missed out on the medal matches following a final Group A defeat against unbeaten Vietnam, according to a statement from the Jordan Olympic Committee. The ladies needed to win their last game to qualify, but went down in the two rounds 16-8, 17-8 to finish third in the group with two wins and two defeats. They will next play for an overall fifth place play-off on Thursday with the opposition to be the team finishing third in Group B. Vietnam tops the group. Top scorers for Jordan were Roa’A Naser and Sara Al Halabeih with four points each. Meanwhile, the Muay Thai action starts Thursday with Mohammad Salama (75kg) and Mohammad Al Barri (81kg) representing Jordan. In the overall medal table, host nation Thailand top the charts with Japan in second and Mongolia is third thanks to their six gold medals to date. China are fourth.

AMMAN — Jordan’s runner Salameh Al Aqraa has continued his fantastic form at the age of 42 by finishing second in the Oman Desert Marathon, according to a statement from the Jordan Olympic Committee. Aqraa showed age is no boundary as he finished behind Morocco’s Rasheed Al Morabity in the gruelling race which covers 165km over six days. During the race, competitors have to carry their own sleeping equipment, food and water and it is regarded as one of the toughest races in the world.

AMMAN — The national football team is looking forward to its friendly against hosts Estonia on Tuesday as Jordan starts its last phase of preparations for the 2015 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) 2015 Asian Cup in Australia. 

The match against the 88th ranked Estonian team, which will be played in the capital Talinn in somewhat colder temperatures than what the squad is used to, is the second this week after Jordan hosted 66th ranked South Korea and lost 1-0.

Coach Ray Wilkins was quoted on the Jordan Football Association website as saying that the national team needs to play more advanced teams and try to vary between European and Asian teams to further improve its competitive edge.

"We have a big Asian competition ahead and we need to be ready. The mental, physical and technical edge comes only by playing more experienced sides," Wilkins said.

The coach expressed satisfaction with the team's current camp which includes the two friendlies, saying: "There are positive vibes and the whole team is working as one." 

He added the line-up was based on technical readiness and the Estonia match will enable the team's head coach and staff to finalise the line-up. 

AMMAN — Jordan followed their opening day victory in the women’s handball event at the Asian Beach Games with a defeat to Chinese Taipei — one of the gold medal favourites in Phuket, Thailand, on Sunday. The first victory over the Philippines gave the Kingdom’s players plenty of confidence for their second match, but they faced a strong Chinese Taipei side who won both rounds 22-11 and 18-6, according to a statement from the Jordan Olympic Committee. They still have a chance to qualify with two remaining Group A matches against Turkmenistan and Vietnam to come. Meanwhile, Lawrence Fanous has his sights on a top 10 finish in a world-class triathlon field for one of the Games’ blue chip events on Monday. The London-based triathlete is in good form and is feeling confident. “I have had some good results after winning in Japan and finishing fourth in Hong Kong since my seventh-place finish in the Asian Games last month, so I am hoping to do well for Jordan,” he was quoted as saying in the statement.

MADRID — Spain and Germany will have different objectives when they play a friendly in Vigo on Tuesday in the first meeting between the European heavyweights since Spain’s 1-0 win in the semifinals of the 2010 World Cup.

Vicente del Bosque’s new-look side will want to show they have put their failed title defence at the 2014 World Cup firmly behind them and some fresh faces coming through will be keen to impress.

Germany, meanwhile, is looking to finish off a stellar year in style after it claimed Spain’s global crown with July’s 1-0 win against Argentina in the World Cup final, their fourth triumph at football’s international showpiece.

Del Bosque is in the process of integrating a new generation following the retirement from internationals of stalwarts like Xavi, Xabi Alonso and David Villa as the European champions prepare for a tilt at a third straight continental title in France in two years’ time.

The hopes of La Roja now rest with players including midfielders Koke and Isco and forward Paco Alcacer, and there is a particular buzz around Isco after he scored a brilliant goal in Saturday’s 3-0 win at home to Belarus in Euro 2016 qualification Group C.

The squad still has plenty of hardened campaigners who have won every major title in the game and one of the most experienced, Sergio Ramos, said after the Belarus match the future was bright.

“The team is gelling more and more as time goes by,” Ramos told reporters.

“There will be better performances and worse performances but the new generation is pushing hard,” added the Real Madrid centre back.

“They are lads with little experience but a lot of desire and ambition. We can be positive about this national team.”

Germany coach Joachim Loew has insisted he and his players are not looking to avenge defeats to Spain in the final of Euro 2008 and in the last four at the 2010 World Cup.

“We want to end the year by showing once again what we are capable of and if possible win the match,” Loew said on Saturday.

“But it is certainly not about revenge for previous games we lost in 2008 or 2010,” he added. “That is not an issue for either team. We are missing a few players and the Spanish too.”