BAHRAIN head coach Helio Sousa said yesterday that his team is well-prepared and ready to defend its title in the upcoming eight-nation 25th Arabian Gulf Cup which starts on Friday in the Iraqi city of Basra.
Bahrain won the championship for the first time in December 2019, defeating three-time winners Saudi Arabia in a historic 1-0 victory in Doha, Qatar, sparking countrywide celebrations in the football-mad kingdom.
Led by captain and goalkeeper Sayed Mohamed Jaffar, the 23-member squad leaves for Basra this morning in a special, chartered plane to ensure they have enough time to acclimatise for their first Group B game against two-time champions the UAE at the 30,000-seat Al Minaa Olympic Stadium on Saturday.
“We are as well prepared as the other seven teams in the competition,” Sousa said. “In fact, our preparations for the tournament this time have actually worked out better than three years ago because we have played four international friendlies at home against world-class teams such as Panama, Cape Verde, Canada and Serbia over the past few months.
“The players are in good nick and have been working hard. So we will aim to do well in the tournament and reach the final because we want to win the competition.”
Sousa, who played for his native Portugal in the 1990s, has coached the Bahrain team since 2019, leading them to another historic tournament victory that same year when the kingdom’s men defeated Iraq 1-0 in the final of the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) Championship in Karbala.
But, despite his satisfaction with the team’s preparations for the Gulf Cup and its determination to retain the title, Sousa sounded a cautionary note as he spoke about the other teams in the tournament.
Also slotted in Group B with Bahrain and the UAE are three-time champions, Qatar, and Kuwait, who have won the championship a record ten times.
Hosts Iraq, with three titles to their name, are in Group A along with Saudi Arabia, two-time champions Oman and Yemen, who have never advanced beyond the group stage in their nine appearances in the tournament so far.
“They are all strong teams,” Sousa said. “So the opposition will be tough. There will be a lot of difficulties because we have some very good teams in our group and there are strong teams in the other group as well.
“So we will have to be stronger and play better. Of course, on their day, any team can win but we have to retain our focus and our belief and fight to achieve our goal. Whatever happens, we must fight!”
The team would take heart in the fact that they were the defending champions but would remain focused on the task at hand, instead of reflecting on past glories, Sousa added.
“This tournament is obviously very important for the region,” he explained. “And it’s important for Bahrain and our team too. So we will take it match-by-match. If we can win the first game, that will give us good momentum because it’s a short competition.
“I know that the final in Doha three years ago was an unforgettable experience. We had a good environment and played really well then. But, as I said earlier, we must be stronger and play even better if we want to win this tournament.”
Bahrain’s second match in the competition is on January 10 against Qatar at the same venue, with their third and final group game three days later against formidable opponents, Kuwait at the 65,000-seat Basra International Stadium.
The squad: Sayed Mohamed Jaffar (captain and goalkeeper), Abdulla Alkhulasi, Abdulla Yusuf Helal, Abdulwahab Almalood, Ahmed Alsherooqi, Ahmed Bughammar, Ali Haram, Ali Madan, Amine bin Adi, Ammar Mohamed (gk), Ebrahim Al Khatal, Ebrahim Lutfalla (gk), Hamad Shamsan, Hamza Abdulla, Jassim Alshaikh, Kumail Alaswad, Mahdi Abdullatif, Mahdi Humaidan, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed Marhoon, Sayed Dhiya Saeed, Sayed Redha Isa, Waleed Alhayam.
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