A few days after Serbian coach Vladimir Petrović had lambasted the FA’s poor planning prior to the crucial World Cup qualifiers that will be played next month – things have gone from bad to worse with the cancellation of the two friendly games against Iran and Yemen.
The Iraqi coach is upset with the lack of planning, having first insisted to the FA that he wanted the team to play two ‘strong’ friendly games before the World Cup qualifiers with Oman, Australia and Japan.
In a backlash to the Iraq FA’s vote for Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa in the AFC president, the UAE FA, whose candidate Yousuf Al-Serkal, a former close alley of the Iraqi FA was overlooked, had ‘apologised’ to the Iraqi FA for being unable to host Iraq’s friendly game with Tehran on May 27.
The Iraq FA general secretary Tariq Ahmed claimed that the FA were ‘seeking’ to move Iraq’s Asian Cup qualifying matches from Dubai to Doha, noting that the FA president Najih Humoud, would make the request to the Qatari FA while attending the Emir Cup Final on Saturday, that will be played between Younis Mahmoud’s Al-Sadd and Al-Rayyan.
The coach told Iraqfpg.com that no decision had been taken in regards to the next training camp, with no friendly game having been organised as of yet. There are three options with the locations of Baghdad, Doha or Amman.
In other news, Petrović has asked the FA to call-up Ali Abbas of Sydney FC for the next training camp.
Hassanin Mubarak's blog 