Faisali, Wihdat contest Asian championships

AMMAN — Faisali host Uzbekistan’s Nasaf Qarshi in the Asian Football Confederation  (AFC) Champions League round robin group stages on Monday as Jordanian teams play regional events alongside their local agenda.

Faisali’s Group B also includes Qatar’s Sadd and UAE’s Sharja.

On the other hand, Wihdat will play the second tier Asian competition, the  AFC Cup, after  they were eliminated from the AFC Champions League, losing 3-0 to Ahli Dubai in the preliminary round after they played in two earlier editions.

Wihdat will host Aleppo’s Ittihad in Group B matches on Tuesday. The Group also includes Kuwait Club and Iraq’s Kahrabaa.

The Hussein vs Wihdat and Faisali vs Aqaba league matches are therefore postponed this week.

In 2022, Wihdat were eliminated in the ACL group stages after they became the first of the Kingdom’s clubs to play in the round robin group stages in 2021. None of the Kingdom’s clubs have ever made it past the ACL  preliminary round where Faisali played in 2020 and 2018,  Wihdat in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 and Shabab Urdun in 2014.

In the second-tier Asian club competition — the AFC Cup — no Jordanian clubs played last season citing financial and technical constraints. 

Earlier this year, Shabab Urdun played at the preliminary round of the King Salman Clubs Cup (the 2023 Arab Club Champions Cup, where they were eliminated by Mauritania’s FC Nouadhibou. 

A total of 37 teams participated in the 30th season of the event — the Arab world’s leading club football tournament organised by UAFA — with a total of $10 million of prize money awarded. Morocco’s Raja CA are the defending champions.