Jordan started participating in World Cup qualifications for the 1986 Mundial.
We started with a great victory over Qatar , 1-0: a goal coming from Issam al-Talli from a corner kick. All what I remember from that is my uncle being really excited about it and seeing that goal a zillion times on Al-Majallah al-Riyadiyyeh every Friday afternoon.
This victory sent a sense of optimism, but we lost the next 3 games and since then we've never been even close to qualifying.
In 1990, we were easily crushed by Iraq and Qatar, and the only team we were able to defeat was Oman, during a time when Oman was defeatable.
In 1994 we were extremely optimistic after scoring big in friendlies (5-1-4), to only be crushed by Iraq and China this time. We came 4th in a group of 5. Yemen, yes Yemen, came ahead of us.
In 1998, we were again relegated from the first round after we weren't able to top UAE or Bahrain.
In 2002, we lost twice to Turkimenstan including one loss at home. Enough said.
In 2006, we started huge with a victory over Iran in Tehran, only to succumb later to the Iranians in Amman and Qataris in Doha.
In 2010, we brought the great coach, prepared well, only to qualify past Kyrgyzstan with penalty kicks and a prayer. Then we lost home to North and South Korea, and today we lost again to North Korea 2-0 and were officially out of the qualifications.
I wonder what else do we have to do for 2014. It's not like we were close and lost in the final decisive game. No, we were never close. In the past 24 years, We were ALWAYS eliminated in the preliminary round, the one preceding the final qualifications round.
I'm just hoping that for 2014 we will get close to the final celebration, that when those million or more of Jordanians start watching the games on TV, and see some Asian team playing there (and probably being smashed), we would say to ourselves , "We were too close to being that team in the Mundial".
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6 comments:
In your opinion,
What does the Jordanian team need to become a humble one, and qualifies to 2014?
The issue with our national team isn't the coaches it isn't the lack of support either, they changed everything and tried everything but nothing seems to work, I think they should take the possibility that the players they pick suck in concideration, ya3ni mish ma32oul, the more support they get the suckier their performance becomes, il mushkileh inno most of the players do not think of football as a hobby, a passion, it's merely a job to them, they need to attend every practice and every game and just run after the ball, when the referee blows his whistle khiles il dawam khalas biraw7ou w ya dar ma fatek sharr!! Lal game il jay!
I'm not sure what's the magical recipe, but I know that if we had more Jordanian players play in decent leagues in Arab countries or any country in Europe even Albania we'd have a better team. We should either improve the Jordanian league level or "export" our players to other countries.
The Argentine and Brazilian teams that participated in world cups in the last few competitions were almost completely formed of players playing outside their home countries because they realized their domestic leagues are not as good as the european ones.
It seems that the Jordanian players are not able to attract the attention of any coach in the European teams. In contrary, few Egyptian players are playing for some decent European clubs,( eg, Mido, Zidan, Al-Hadary). Why?!
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Hareega, I bit that your grandsons may enjoy watching our team playing in 2080. Forget about 2014.
there isn't any world cup in 2080, it's either 2082 or 2078, 7addidi anoo wa7ad feehom?
LOOOOOOOOOL .....
I expected you to say so!
:-)
Enjoy Euro 2008, and forget about the rest!
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