HANDBALL – BAHRAIN get their medal bid underway today in the 19th Asian Men’s Junior Handball Championship, set to take place in Chuzhou, China.
The kingdom’s junior men are one of 13 national teams taking part in the under-21 tournament, which is being organised by the Asian Handball Federation (AHF) in cooperation with the Chinese Handball Association.
The competition also acts as the continental qualifier for the 26th IHF Men’s U21 Handball World Championship, to be held from June 23 to July 4 next year in North Macedonia.
Bahrain are in Group A for the event’s preliminary round and they first face off with Chinese Taipei today at 11am, Bahrain time. Their next assignment will be against Saudi Arabia tomorrow, before taking on Hong Kong on Sunday. The Bahrainis then play their penultimate fixture against Oman on Monday before completing their schedule in the preliminaries against China on Wednesday next week.
Group B is composed of defending champions Japan, South Korea, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, India, and the UAE.
At the end of the single round-robin, the top four teams from each group move on to the quarter-finals, which are scheduled for July 24. The semi-finals will then be held on July 25, setting the match-ups for the gold and bronze medal games on the championship’s concluding day on July 27.
Classification contests are also slated on each of the days of the knockouts.
Bahrain have an 18-player roster in the competition, coached by Bahraini tactician Hussam Madan, whose staff includes assistant coach and former national team star Jaafar Abdulqader.
The kingdom’s roster is spearheaded by senior men’s national team standout Salman Alshowaikh, while the rest of the players includes Ali Almahroos, Ahmed Al Samaheeji, Sayed Majeed Al Muhafdha, Abbas Hussain, Ahmed Eid, Ahmed Abdulla, Mahdi Jaafar, Mahmoud Jaleel, Hassan Saif, Sayed Ahmed Alfalahi, Mohammed Haitham, Abu Dhar Jaafar, Ali Sami, Mohammed Zuhair, Fadel Abbas, Haider Mohammed, and Hassan Khatem.
As part of the pre-tournament formalities, members of Bahrain’s administrative team took part yesterday in the official technical meeting, supervised by the AHF, where their uniforms for their matches were approved.
Bahrain’s junior men have climbed the podium in each of the three previous editions of the continental affair, winning silver in 2022 and capturing bronze both in 2018 and 2024.
The nationals had won the gold medals once in the past, in the 1998 edition, and also secured silver in 1994 to add to their three most recent medal successes.
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