Courtesy: Iraq Slogger

Iraq Futsal Team in Asia Championship

Iraqis Face Uzbekistan in First Round Sunday

Baghdad, May 11, (VOI)

Iraq's national futsal team will play its first game in Asia Futsal Championship (AFC) 2007 on Sunday against Uzbekistan, the first runner-up to Japan in the last tournament hosted by Uzbekistan in 2006.
Iraq plays in Group B with Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Thailand in this tournament to be hosted by Japan on May 13-19, 2007.

"The group in which the Iraqi team will play is one of the toughest of the four Asian groups," Kadhim Fleih, a member of the Iraqi team's training staff, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) on Friday.

"The Iraqi team, however, will accept the challenge and achieve good results qualifying it further up in the tournament," added Fleih.

Iraq's futsal team will play Thailand on Monday and then its last encounter in the group with neighboring Kuwait.

The tournament will see 16 Asian teams playing after qualifying to the finals in Japan. Iraq went to Japan at the expense of Guam (officially the U.S. Territory of Guam, an island in the Western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated territory of the United States), South Korea and Indonesia.

This is the fifth time Iraq qualifies to AFC but failed to realized remarkable results during all four previous participations.The first one was in 2001 in Iran and the last one in 2005 in Thailand.




Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com