FOOTBALL – BAHRAIN’S under-23 Olympic football team will play two friendly matches this week during their overseas training camp in Amman, Jordan, before departing directly to Doha, Qatar, for the AFC U23 Asian Cup 2026 Qualifiers.
This was announced yesterday by the Bahrain Football Association.
The nationals are in the Jordanian capital to conduct their final preparations for the continental competition.
Their pair of tune-up games will be against their counterparts from hosts Jordan. The first will be tomorrow and then the two teams will face off once again on Thursday.
The Bahrainis will then travel to Qatar on Friday a few days ahead of qualification, which kicks off on September 3.
The Bahrainis are slotted in Group H alongside India, Brunei Darussalam, and hosts Qatar. The matches will be taking place in Doha at Suheim bin Hamad Stadium and Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium.
Olympic team head coach Ali Abdulmajeed has 21 players on his roster for the camp and the qualifiers. The list includes skipper Mubarak Mohammed, Issa Abdulla, Salman Younes, Mohammed Al Shehani, Abdulla Al Qassab, Hashem Khelaifat, Bader Al Asam, Abdulla Al Obaidly, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaie, Mahmoud Al Bannai, Khaled Khalaf, Rashed Mujiran, Abdulrahman Al Khayyat, Salem Al Dosari, Ali Sahwan, Saad Al Attar, Saud Mohsen, Hassan Sameer, and goalkeepers Ashraf Mubarak, Mohammed Khalifa, and Abdulla Freah.
The under-23 nationals are one of 44 Olympic teams entered in the AFC U23 Asian Cup 2026 Qualifiers. The field has been divided into 11 groups, each to be held in a centralised location.
Bahrain kick off their campaign against India on September 3, before playing Brunei Darussalam on September 6. They then wrap up their qualification bid against the hometown Qataris on September 9.
At the end of a single round-robin, each group winner and the four best best-ranked runners-up will book their tickets to next year’s competition proper and join hosts Saudi Arabia, who are staging the event for the first time.
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.
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