FOOTBALL – BAHRAIN will be hoping to rewrite history later this month and secure their first-ever berth in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup.
The kingdom’s women’s football national team are gearing up to compete in the qualifiers for the prestigious Asian Football Confederation (AFC) competition, which is set to take place in March of next year in Australia.
The Bahrainis are one of 34 squads set to vie for a place in the continental showcase.
The field has been divided into eight groups for qualifying. Each division will be held at a centralised location, and the group winners will all qualify for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026.
Those eight will join the four nations already with a berth in the event, including Australia who have a spot as hosts, along with China, South Korea, and Japan, who were the top three from the tournament’s previous edition held in 2022.
Bahrain are in Group C for the upcoming qualifiers alongside hosts Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Turkmenistan.
Group A features hosts Jordan, Iran, Lebanon, Singapore, and Bhutan; Group B is composed of hosts Thailand, India, Mongolia, Timor-Leste, and Iraq; Group D comprises hosts Indonesia, Chinese Taipei, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan; Group E features hosts Vietnam, Guam, the UAE, and the Maldives; Group F is composed of hosts Uzbekistan, Nepal, Laos, and Sri Lanka; Group G comprises hosts Cambodia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia; and Group H includes hosts Tajikistan, North Korea, Malaysia, and Palestine.
The Bahrainis open their qualification campaign on June 29 against Bangladesh. They then take on Turkmenistan on July 2, after which they play home side Myanmar on July 5.
All matches are to be held at Thuwunna Stadium in the city of Yangon.
The Bahrainis have been preparing for the qualifiers with training under head coach Mohammed Adnan. They have played a number of friendly games over the past several weeks against their women’s national team counterparts from Saudi and the UAE.
Many of the players on the kingdom’s squad are also members of Bahrain’s women’s futsal national team, who just last month competed in the AFC Women’s Futsal Asian Cup in China.
There, they lost all three of their matches in Group C of the preliminary round, where they faced eventual champions Japan, silver-medallists Thailand, and Indonesia.
The AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2025 will be the 21st edition of the quadrennial competition.
While the Bahrainis have yet to appear in the event, they came close to qualifying for the 2018 tournament, which was held in Amman, Jordan. They won two of their five assignments in their qualification group and finished two points shy from booking their seat.
The women’s national team’s first appearance in the qualifiers was for the 2014 competition, when they won one of their three fixtures.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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