Tomorrow, Sunday, the Qatari youth team under 20 years old will face its Jordanian counterpart, at Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium, in the third and final round of the tenth group of the Asian Youth Cup qualifiers for the continental finals hosted by China during the period from 6 to 23 February 2025.
The Qatari youth team, champion of the 2014 continental edition, was able to win in the first and second rounds over both the Singapore and Hong Kong teams, China, 3/0 and 2/0, to score 6 points on goal difference over the Jordanian team, which led the group.
The Qatari team, seeking to record its sixteenth appearance in the continental finals, hopes to obtain a direct promotion ticket to the tournament without waiting.
The Spanish coach Felix Angel, the coach of the Qatari national team, was keen to strengthen the physical condition of the players through the preparations that preceded the confrontation at the stadiums of the Aspire Sports Excellence Academy, and to choose the squad that will play in tomorrow’s match.
The Qatari team appeared in a distinguished manner during the confrontation with Hong Kong yesterday and was able to present a balanced display in both defensive and offensive aspects, and despite leaving tied without goals in the first half, it maintained its offensive approach and knew how to end the match to its advantage in the second half.
The Qatari national team coach expressed his great confidence in the capabilities of all the players, stressing at the same time the difficulty of the task, but he realized that the national team had reached the required stage of readiness and was reassured of its condition after playing the matches in Singapore and Hong Kong.
A number of players emerged among the ranks of Al-A’dam, led by Ibrahim Al-Hassan, the Spanish Calhora player, who has two goals on his score, equal to his teammate Mohamed Khaled.
Spanish coach Angel will also rely on the incursions of Spanish Alcorcon player Tahseen Mohamed, his teammate Mohamed Hani, the Al-Sadd player, and goalkeeper Abu Bakr Mohamed, who kept his net clean.
It is likely that the technical staff of the Qatari national team will make some changes, given that the Jordanian national team differs in nature from the national teams of Singapore and Hong Kong, China, and caution must be taken regarding it.
For its part, the Jordanian team also succeeded in gaining 6 points by defeating Hong Kong by seven clean goals and Singapore by two unanswered goals.
The Dutch national team coach, Peter Meendertsma, knows that he will face a difficult competitor that is different from his previous two matches, indicating that he is confident in the players’ abilities to achieve the goal of passing to the continental finals.
The Jordanian national team has in its ranks a prominent number of players who excelled in the matches between Hong Kong and Singapore, led by the forward duo, Odeh Fakhoury and Ibrahim Sabra, while the efforts of midfielder Izz al-Din Abu Al-Saud will be lost after he received the red card against Singapore yesterday.
Throughout the history of its participation in the AFC U-20 Cup finals, the Qatari youth team was able to win the title for the first time in 2014 during the edition hosted by Myanmar, by defeating the North Korean team in the final match with an unanswered goal scored by Akram Afif under the leadership of Spanish coach Felix Sanchez. Al-Sadd Al-Qarim” also qualified for the semi-finals in the 2018 edition, which was hosted by Indonesia.
The ten first-placed teams in each group will qualify for the continental finals, along with the five best second-placed teams. The top four teams in the continental championship will also qualify for the 2025 U-20 World Cup finals scheduled in Chile.
