Jordan takes on Oman Friday in friendly match

AMMAN  — Jordan’s national football team plays Oman on Friday in their fourth friendly of the season which comes amid their training agenda for the 2019 Asian Cup qualifiers kicking off in March 2017.

Jordan beat the Olympic team 4-1 in a match played in Aqaba before leaving to Muscat midweek. It is also set to play Morocco in Agadir on October 10.

Jordan last held Bahrain 0-0, Lebanon 1-1 and lost to 3-2 to Qatar in the first of 7 friendlies. The squad’s last tournament was the King’s Cup, an international football tournament organised in Thailand where it lost to the host in the final. 

The national team has mainly been represented by a mostly new line-up without most pros playing aboard as the coaching staff try to give younger team members competitive experience. Coach Abdullah Abu Zameh was quoted on the Jordan Football Association website as saying: “We are striving to build a new team, and giving new players competitive experience needs time.”

The Kingdom dropped seven places to 86th in the latest FIFA Rankings issued last month. Jordan also dropped to 10th in Asia trailing Iran (37), Australia (45), South Korea (47), Uzbekistan (49), Saudi Arabia (52), Japan (53), the UAE (66), China (78) and Qatar (85).

Jordan was eliminated from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers doubling as part of the qualification for 2019 Asian Cup. After putting behind elimination from 2018 World Cup qualifiers, Abu Zam’eh, has recalled mainly younger players including Olympic team players.

The national team will regroup for friendlies and camps until the start of the Asian qualifiers from which group winners and four best runners-up (total 12 teams) advance to the 2019 AFC Asian Cup finals and the final round of qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The next best 24 teams from the preliminary stage of the joint qualifiers will compete in a separate competition for the remaining slots (12 slots or 11 slots and one slot for the host) in the 24-team 2019 Asian Cup.

In past Asian Cup editions, Jordan reached the championship three times since first taking part in qualifiers in 1972. The pinnacle was at the 13th Asian Cup when they lost to Japan in the quarter-finals and jumped to the best ever FIFA Ranking of 37th in August 2004. In 2011, Jordan again reached the quarter-finals. 

The Kingdom had the most memorable World Cup qualifying journey in 2013 even though it lost a possible chance to play at the World Cup for the first time and advanced to play then World’s 6th ranked Uruguay in an intercontinental qualifying tie for a place in the 2014 World Cup. 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 first taking part in the qualifiers. Round 3 had been the furthest Jordan reached in the past seven times in the qualifiers since 1986.