Jordan sets agenda for 2019 Asian Cup

AMMAN — Jordan’s national team, gearing up for the 2019 Asian Cup, is finalising its agenda leading up to the continent’s leading football competition.

It was announced over the weekend that the team will have a training camp in Qatar in December during which matches against the host and Kyrgyzstan have been set ahead of the January 6 Asian Cup kick off.

The national team, now at a low 110th in the latest FIFA Rankings, last played Cyprus winning 3-0 in a new series of friendlies. Jordan is next set to host Lebanon on September 6 and Oman on September 11. There were discussions of also playing Albania and Croatia in October. In case the West Asian Championship is not held in November, officials were contemplating hosting a friendly tournament in November.

Once among the Asia top 10, Jordan is now 19th in the continent, lagging behind relatively uncompetitive Asian teams.

Jordan was drawn in Group B alongside Australia, Syria and Palestine for the Asian Cup, but advancing to the 2019 UAE event was not a difficult task against relatively unknown teams in the Asian continent. The 24 teams were split to play in six groups. The top two from each group and four third placed teams will advance to the Round of 16. 

Since first taking part in Asian Cup qualifiers in 1972, Jordan reached the Asian Championship three times. The pinnacle was at the 13th Asian Cup, when they lost to Japan in the quarter-finals and jumped to the best ever FIFA rank of 37th in August 2004. It also reached the Asian Cup in 2011 and 2015.

After elimination from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, getting to the Asian finals was a priority for Jordan who have steadily slid down FIFA rankings and the team has had inconsistent results compared to 2013 when Jordan was on the verge of qualifying to the 2014 World Cup for the first time, and advanced to play then World’s 6th ranked Uruguay in an intercontinental qualifying tie. It lost the home game 5-0 and held the former World Cup champs 0-0 in the away match. Jordan had never reached that far in World Cup qualifying since taking part in qualifiers. Round 3 had been the furthest Jordan reached in the past seven times in the qualifiers since 1986.