Jordan gears up for U-23 West Asia Championship

AMMAN – The Kingdom’s U-23 football squad is gearing up for the  upcoming 6th edition of the U-23 West Asia Championship slated for Oman March 19-25.

The 8 competing teams will play in four groups: Kuwait vs Jordan, UAE vs Bahrain, Saudi Arabia vs Oman, Syria, vs Lebanon. The winners will move to the semis with the rest playing for  rest of final positions. 

Iran won the inaugural U-23 West Asia Championship title in 2015, Jordan in 2021, Saudi in 2022, Iraq in 2023 and South Korea 2024.

It will be Jordan’s fifth time at the competition where they exited Round 1 in 2015, won the title in 2021, (did not play in 2022), exited the semis in 2023, and finished 5th in 2024.

The event will be a good chance for assessment and fine tuning ahead of the U-23 Asian Cup qualifiers slated for Sept 1-9. 

In their 6th time at the U-23 Asian Cup (previously the Asian Championship), Jordan  exited the 6th AFC U-23 Asian Cup in 2024 in Round 1 of the competition which was a qualifier to the Olympic Games. 

In previous editions, Jordan had their best performance finishing 3rd in 2014, reached the quarters  in 2016, exited Round 1 in 2018;  reached the quarters in 2020 and exited Round 1 in 2022.

This year, the U-20 squad exited Round 1 of the Asian Cup (previously the AFC Youth Championship and AFC U-19 Championship) which is a qualifying tournament to the U20 World Cup.  Similarly, Jordan exited the qualifiers of the U-17 Asian Cup in 2024 and 2022.