National football team prepares for King’s Cup

AMMAN  — Jordan’s national team regrouped on Saturday as those playing abroad joined teammates for the upcoming phase of regional competitions.

The squad will leave to Bangkok on Tuesday where they will play at the King’s Cup, an international football tournament organised in Thailand by the Football Association of Thailand June 3-5. 

Jordan is slated to play the UAE on June 3, while Syria plays Thailand with the winners playing for the $50,000 prize on June 5. The tournament has been played since 1968 with the exception of 1983, 1985, 2008, 2011 and 2014. South Korea won in 2015.

Following the King’s Cup, Jordan will be in the midst of preparations for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers starting in March 2017. The Jordan Football Association announced the team will play Iraq on August 31 and Bahrain on September 6.

The Kingdom was eliminated from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers doubling as part of the qualification for 2019 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup after a dismal 5-1 defeat to Australia. The group winners and four best runners-up (total 12 teams) advance to the 2019 AFC Asian Cup finals and the final round of qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The next best 24 teams from the preliminary stage of the joint qualifiers will compete in a separate competition for the remaining slots (12 slots or 11 slots + one slot for the host) in the 24-team 2019 Asian Cup. 

It has been an inconsistent year for Jordan’s squad with three coaches leading the vital qualifying process. The line-up was led by Briton Ray Wilkins under whom the team failed to advance past the quarters of the 16th AFC Asian Cup in 2015 before Ahmad Abdul Qader took over in the transitional phase under whom the team played the first qualifier. Belgian Paul Put took over in July 2015, but his tenure was also suspended when he was caught in the midst of a court case over match fixing in the Belgian league. Harry Redknapp led the team in the last two qualifiers with a focus on reaching the Asian Championship and keeping World Cup qualifying chances alive.

The Kingdom had the most memorable World Cup qualifying journey in 2013 when they lost a possible chance to play at the World Cup for the first time and advanced to play then World’s 6th ranked Uruguay in an intercontinental qualifying tie for a place in the 2014 World Cup. They lost the home game 5-0 and held the former World Cup champs 0-0 in the away match. Jordan had never reached that far in World Cup qualifying since taking part in the qualifiers in 1985. Round 3 had been the furthest Jordan reached in the past seven times in the qualifiers.

In the Asian Cup, Jordan reached the Championship three times since first taking part in qualifiers in 1972: the pinnacle was at the 13th Asian Cup, when they lost to Japan in the quarter-finals and jumped to the best ever FIFA rank of 37th in August 2004. In 2011 and 2015, Jordan again reached the quarter-finals.

The line-up now includes mainly younger players. Coach Abdullah Abu Zam’eh has included Olympic team players and excluded stats like goalie Amer Shafie, Anas Bani Yasin, Hasan Abdul Fattah and Odey Saifi. Players from Wihdat and Faisali were also set to join the squad after their respective teams were eliminated from the AFC Cup Round of 16 matches. Wihdat lost to Iraq’s Air Force 2-1 while Faisali lost to Bahrain’s Muharraq 1-0.