Thursday

SME – Written by / Ali Al-Basha
Only three days separate us from the third round match in Group Three of the Asian qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup in the third stage between our national team and Indonesia, hosted by the Bahrain National Stadium, where our national team is looking forward to winning and raising its score to 6 points out of a possible nine, and Japan leads the standings with a full score, while China is at the bottom. Beware of Indonesia, it is a good team in terms of competition and has strengthened its lines with a group of naturalized players and has come out with two important draws against strong competitors. As we saw against Saudi Arabia, it is a strong team that embarrasses competitors, which is something we must take into account. We must not be lenient in front of it, but rather respect it and work to win against it… I believe that the coach knows the importance of winning on its home ground and among its fans. If he wants to stay in the competition, he must win against it, and he must exploit the home ground factor, the presence of the fans and focus in an ideal way, and not be lost like the last time against Japan and in a different way, and where our players were like docile lambs, so we saw this loss as harsh and the reason for it was fatigue. Whereas the fatigue last time, I think it was a result of the physical preparation not being consistent between the two matches; Therefore, here there must be physical tests to determine the players’ readiness, and therefore the search this time must be for the most prepared player, not the best, noting that there were key players in the last match who were not key players in their teams in the league. The search is supposed to be for players with a high number because in the absence of international friendly matches for the national team, the ideal preparation is the league matches, and we do not want to measure through the names that have readiness; because it is the task of the national team’s technical staff, which must avoid losing in a match that is supposed to be within its reach on paper, and we should not be last. We hope that the strong public support for the national team will continue in the two rounds of this month, whether here on Thursday, or in Saudi Arabia (Tuesday, October 15). It is not difficult for us to come out of the two rounds with four points; because the search for qualification through this stage or the next one requires us to collect more points. Will October be a good omen for our national team?!