CHANGZHOU, CHINA, January 20, 2018 (WAFA) – Palestine’s Olympic U23 football team left the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U23 quarter-finals championship after losing 2-3 to Qatar in the game played on Friday at Changzhou Olympic Sports Center.
Palestine, ranked seven in the AFC U23 Championship, advanced to the quarter-finals after an impressive win of 5 goals to 1 over Thailand on Tuesday.
Palestine lost only one game in the AFC U23 championship group games against Japan, the current AFC U23 champion, which scored only one goal against Palestine, and drew 1-1 in another game against North Korea.
Qatar scored two goals in the first half of the game against nothing for Palestine. It then scored its third goal early in the second half.
Minutes after the third Qatari goal, Palestine scored its first goal in the game then it scored the second goal three minutes before the end of regular time for the second half by three minutes even though the Palestinian team played with only 10 players after losing one player in the 77th minute for getting two yellow cards.
“Our team played very bad in the first half and made many mistakes that led Qatar to score two goals, which made our efforts even the more difficult,” said the Palestinian team’s coach Ayman Sandouka.
“Our performance got much better in the second half after the third Qatari goal early in the half,” he added. “I made some changes in the play to at least score enough goals to reach a draw.”
He said the first goal the Palestinian team was able to score gave hope to the players and there were opportunities to score more goals but luck was against it.
Jibril Rjoub, head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association who was with the Olympic team in Changzhou, described Palestine’s participation in the U23 games and reaching the quarter-finals as “historic.”
“Our team gave an honorable show in all the games in the championship, which was clear from the results that qualified it for the quarter-finals along with the current champion, Japan,” he said.
The Palestinian football team is ranked 75, its best rank ever, in the FIFA World Ranking for men.
M.K.
