Bahrain kick off Asian Cup qualifiers preparations

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain head coach Helio Sousa has stressed the importance of being fully prepared for the senior men’s national team’s upcoming campaign in the third round of qualifying for the AFC Asian Cup 2023.

The nationals are set to play three qualifiers in June against Turkmenistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia in the hopes of clinching a berth in next year’s continental showcase.

The team last night kicked off their latest training gathering in preparation for those matches, which will be played at the Malaysian capital. Sousa highlighted that there is plenty to take into consideration as they look to “arrive in the best conditions” for this qualification phase.

“We must prepare in the best way for the qualifiers and arrive in the best conditions to win the first game,” Sousa said. “We already know Malaysia, we played a tough friendly game against them and won, but it was a tough match. They have good players and a very good squad.

The other two teams we don’t know much about, so we must prepare to get some knowledge about them. “Now is the time to get ourselves ready; to know where we will begin training at the beginning of May before we make the trip to Malaysia.

We have to take care of the difference in hours between there and Bahrain, the conditions of the weather, the humidity; we have to consider all this and be ready for the competition.

“We must do our best to play in the Asian Cup as that is what we desire.” Sousa has named a 26-player squad for this training period, which continues until March 29. They will be playing three international friendly matches during this time, first against India on March 23, then facing Burundi on March 26 and lastly against Belarus on March 29.

The national team’s training roster includes foreign-based Bahraini internationals Ali Madan from Al Urooba in the UAE, Abdulla Hazaa and Ali Haram from Al Tadhamon in Kuwait, and Abdulla Yousef from Slovan Liberec in the Czech Republic. From the local contingent, there are six players apiece from back-to-back national league champions Riffa and AFC Cup title-holders Muharraq.

The Riffa standouts include Komail Al Aswad, Mohammed Jassim Marhoon, Sayed Redha Isa, Jassim Al Shaikh, Hamad Shamsan and Abdulla Efrih; while the Muharraq players are Abdulwahab Al Malood, Amine Hasan, Hamza Juban, Hasan Karrani, Waleed Al Hayam and veteran goalkeeper Sayed Mohammed Jaafar. Four others are from Al Khaldiya, namely Ahmed Abdulla, Mahdi Humaidan, Mohammed Hardan and Sayed Dhiya Saeed.

There are three from Manama, including current Bahrain league top scorer Mahdi Abduljabbar, Ammar Abbas and Ebrahim Al Khattal. The line-up is completed by Abbas Ayyad from Al Ahli, and Abdulaziz Mohamed and Abdulla Hashash from Budaiya. The AFC Asian Cup is scheduled to kick off on June 16 next year in China.

Bahrain is looking to secure their seventh appearance in the tournament proper. They first appeared in 1988, and have qualified for the last five tournaments in 2004, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019. The Bahrainis’ best finish in the competition was fourth in 2004. They reached the last 16 in 2019 but did not make it past the group stage the other times.