Jordan national football team regroups for regional events

AMMAN  — Jordan’s national football team regrouped on Monday to start a new phase of regional competitions after putting behind its elimination from 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

The national team coach Abdullah Abu Zam’eh, who assisted Harry Redknapp in the interim period, has recalled mainly younger players for the training camp which will run until May 28 in midst of preparations for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers starting in March 2017.

Abu Zam’eh has included Olympic team players and excluded stats like goalie Amer Shafie, Anas Bani Yasin, Hasan Abdul Fattah and Odey Saifi. 

Jordan will play in the King’s Cup, an international football tournament organised in Thailand by the Football Association of Thailand June 3-5. The tournament has been played since 1968, with the exception of 1983, 1985, 2008, 2011 and 2014. South Korea won in 2015. Jordan will play the UAE while Syria plays Thailand with the winners playing for the $50,000 grand prize. During the training camp players from Wihdat and Faisali will take time off for their teams Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup second round matches on May 23-24.

The Kingdom was eliminated from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers doubling as part of the qualification for 2019 Asian Cup after a dismal 5-1 defeat to Australia. The qualifying journey ended in Round 1 after an inconsistent year that saw the national team lose 1-0 to Kyrgyzstan 3-0 to Tajikistan and scoring an 8-0 win over Bangladesh in Leg 2. In Leg 1, Jordan was held to a disappointing 0-0 draw with Kyrgyzstan, beat Tajikistan 3-1, Australia 2-0 and Bangladesh 4-0.

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 and one slot for the host) in the 24-team 2019 Asian Cup. 

Jordan is still 82nd in latest FIFA World Rankings and 9th in Asia trailing Iran (42), Australia (50), South Korea (54), Japan (57), Saudi Arabia (60), Uzbekistan (66), the UAE (68) and China (81). Argentina took over the world’s top spot as Belgium dropped to second trailed by Chile, Columbia Germany, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Uruguay and England.

It has been an inconsistent year for Jordan’s squad who has seen 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 it 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. It 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 as of 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, Jordan again reached the quarter-finals.