Khaldiya players to join Serbia camp

TDT | Manama    

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s senior men’s national football team will be welcoming six additional players to their overseas training camp in Serbia. Al Khaldiya standouts Mahdi Humaidan, Sayed Dhiya Saeed, Ahmed Bughammar, Mohammed Adel, Mohammed Al Hardan and Mahdi Abduljabbar are also set to rejoin the team after completing their club duty on Tuesday night.

Khaldiya took to the pitch in a play-off contest for a berth in the 2023/2024 AFC Cup, but lost the game to Al Nahda of Oman and will not be taking part in the competition.

Bahrain will thus have just one representative in this year’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) tournament, with Riffa having qualified as national league champions from the 2021/2022 season.

Khaldiya’s six, who originally joined the nationals in the first week of their gathering locally, will now be flying to Belgrade to join the ongoing preparations under head coach Juan Antonio Pizzi.

The Bahrainis already have a 20-player squad there as they gear up for their upcoming continental qualifying campaign for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, starting this November.

They played a friendly against Serbian professional football club FK Radnički Sremska Mitrovica, also on Tuesday, which they lost 2-3.

It was the first of a number of first tune-ups Bahrain are expected to play against local opposition during their Serbian camp, which kicked off last week.

Yesterday, the Bahrainis continued their physical fitness training programme in the gym. The nationals will be in Europe until 2 September, after which they will fly to Dubai.

The 20 players already in Belgrade are Hamza Al Juban, Amine Hasan, Abdulla Al Khalasi, Hussain Jameel, Sayed Mohammed Jaafar, Sayed Redha Issa, Abdulkarim Al Fardan, Ahmed Al Sherooqi, Mubarak Mohammed, Waleed Al Hayyam, Ahmed Nabeel, Ali Hassan Saeed, Komail Alaswad, Ali Haram, Jassim Al Shaikh, Talal Al Sherooqi, Abbas Al Asfoor, Ebrahim Luthfallah, Ebrahim Al Khattal and Ahmed Moussa.

The Kingdom’s three overseas-based professionals, namely Ali Madan, Mohammed Marhoon and Abdulla Yusuf, are scheduled to join the nationals in the Emirates.

Bahrain will play two international friendly matches in Dubai against Kuwait on 7 September and then with Turkmenistan on 12 September. The Bahrainis will then also play two exhibition games in October, both at home.

They will lock horns with the Philippines men’s national team on 12 October and then against Kyrgyzstan on 17 October.

Aside from World Cup qualification, Bahrain are also gearing up for the next edition of the AFC Asian Cup, to be held in Doha in January of next year.

There are five rounds in the World Cup qualification format for the AFC, which will have eight teams book their tickets to the global showcase, plus potentially another following an inter-confederation play-off.

Bahrain will play directly in the second round of qualifiers starting November.

They have been drawn in a competitive Group H along with the UAE, and either Yemen or Sri Lanka and Nepal or Laos. The nationals kick off their campaign on 16 November against either Yemen or Sri Lanka.

There are 36 nations in all in this phase, divided into nine groups of four.

The teams will play against each other on a home-and-away basis. The nine group winners and group runners-up advance to the third round.

In addition to this, they will also automatically qualify for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup