Bahrain's under-23 Olympic football team have kicked off their latest local training gathering in preparation for their upcoming competitions.
Head coach Ali Abdulmajeed has called up 28 players for this period of preparation, which continues until next month.
Amongst the tournaments the Bahrainis are gearing up for is the AFC U23 Asian Cup 2026 Qualifiers. They are set to be one of 44 sides who will be competing in the qualifying competition, which is scheduled to take place this September.
Abdulmajeed’s squad includes goalkeepers Abdulla Freah, Ashraf Mubarak, Mohammed Al Sayegh, and Mohammaed Ahrama, while the rest of the roster features Rashid Mujiran, Ramzi Khudair, Mubarak Mohammed, Saad Al Attar, Salem Al Khayyat, Abdulrahman Al Doseri, Hassan Samir, Mohammed Al Bannai, Mohammed Ahmed, Abdulla Al Qassab, Khaled Hanish, Abdulrahman Anfoos, Salman Al Obaidly, Adulla Younes, Saud Mohsen, Mohammed Al Jishi, Mohammed Al Shehani, Hashim Khalifat, Jawad Ali, Issa Ghuloom, Ali Tarada, Ali Sahwan, Bader Al Asam, and Sayed Ahmed Alwadaie.
The nationals are holding their practices at the Bahrain Football Association pitches in Riffa.
Alwadaie recently completed international duty with the kingdom’s senior men’s football national team, where he was the youngest member of the squad that competed in the Asian qualifiers for the Fifa World Cup 2026.
He is expected to be one of the top stars in Bahrain’s Olympic side.
The field that will be taking part in the AFC U23 Asian Cup 2026 Qualifiers has been divided into 11 groups, each of which will hold their matches at a central location. The 11 group winners and four best best-ranked runners-up will book their tickets to the competition proper and join hosts Saudi Arabia, who are staging the event for the first time.
Bahrain are in Group H alongside Qatar, India, and Brunei Darussalam. Their games will be played in Doha.
Group A features hosts Jordan, Turkmenistan, Chinese Taipei, and Bhutan; Group B is composed of hosts Myanmar, Japan, Kuwait, and Afghanistan; Group C consists of hosts Vietnam, Yemen, Singapore, and Bangladesh; Group D comprises hosts China, Australia, Timor-Leste, and Northern Mariana Islands; Group E features hosts Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Palestine, and Sri Lanka; Group F consists of hosts Thailand, Malaysia, Lebanon, and Mongolia; Group G is composed of hosts Cambodia, Iraq, Oman, and Pakistan; Group I comprises hosts UAE, Iran, Hong Kong, and Guam; Group J features hosts Indonesia, South Korea, Laos, and Macau; and Group K is composed of hosts Tajikistan, Syria, the Philippines, and Nepal.
Abdulmajeed has taken over for Moroccan Hicham Dimai, who was last in charge for the kingdom’s under-23s in the 2025 West Asian Football Federation U23 Championship, held last March in Muscat, Oman.
Next year’s AFC U23 Asian Cup will be its seventh edition. Bahrain have qualified for the tournament just once in the past – in the 2020 event held in Bangkok, Thailand, where they finished last in Group A during the opening stage.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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