Olympic team set for friendly with Thailand’s Prachinburi United

TDT | Manama                        

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s under-23 Olympic football team are set to take on Thai club Prachinburi United FC today in a friendly match as part of their overseas training camp in Bangkok.

The nationals are currently gearing up for their upcoming qualifiers for the 2024 AFC U23 Asian Cup. This training period under head coach Dario Basic of Croatia is scheduled to continue until 16 August, and today’s tune-up is only the first of a number planned to be played.

The under-23s have a 28-player squad at their camp, including Mustafa Al Salem, Omar Saber, Hussein Harouneh, Hussein Abdulkarim, Abdulla Freih, Ahmed Dia, Abdulla Al Subaie, Abdulrahman Al Obaidly, Adel Al Rumaihi, Saleh Al Zubaidi, Mubarak Mohammed, Abdulla Al Khalasi, Salman Abdulla, Mohammed Abdul Qayyum, Ahmed Kamel, Khalifa Al Lafi, Salman Adel, Khalil Ebrahim, Ahmed Musalam, Hassan Issa, Ali Mohammed Redha, Ahmed Abdulhameed, Hussein Al Aker, Hassan Abdulnabi, Yasseen Karim, Salem Al Dosari, Salem Hussein and Sayed Jawad Haider.

They have been conducting practices daily since their arrival over the weekend. The qualifiers are scheduled to take place 4 to 12 September, with Bahrain’s group to be hosted in the Kingdom. The nationals have been drawn in Group D with Japan, Palestine and Pakistan.

There are 11 groups in all, with 10 comprising four nations and one featuring three. Each group will host their matches at a centralised venue. Bahrain have qualified just once in the previous five editions of the AFC U-23 Asian Cup. That was in the 2020 event held in Thailand, when they did not make it past the group stage.