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The International Football Association Board (FIFA) decided, on Wednesday, to transfer the match between Iraq and the UAE in the framework of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, to Jordan for “security reasons”.
A member of the Iraqi Football Association, Ahmed Al-Moussawi, said that “the Iraqi Football Association received a letter from the International Federation that included the decision to transfer our national team’s match against its UAE counterpart to a neutral ground, which is Jordan,” according to AFP.
The Secretary of the Union, Muhammad Farhan, confirmed that “this decision came against the background of the recent missile bombardment that Erbil was subjected to.”
In turn, the UAE Federation announced the transfer of its expected match to a neutral ground, despite the lifting of the ban on holding official international matches in Iraq at the end of last month.
He said, “The International and Asian Football Associations decided to transfer the match of our national team and its brother, the Iraqi team, in the Asian qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup for Group A, which is scheduled for Thursday, March 24, to a neutral ground.”
The International Federation (FIFA) lifted the ban on holding official matches in Iraq at the end of last February. “In the future, we can host matches, whether in the capital, at the Al-Madina International Stadium, or at the Basra and Najaf international stadiums,” Al-Moussawi said at the time, in contact with Agence France-Presse.
And the Iraqi Federation quoted the president of the federation, Adnan Darjal, in a media statement that “the International Federation has officially agreed to hold the match of the Iraqi and Emirati teams in Baghdad and at the International City Stadium in the capital.”
In the last period, Iraqi stadiums faced a ban imposed by FIFA, based on security assessments that did not allow matches to be held.
The Iraqi national team is scheduled to meet its UAE counterpart on the twenty-fourth of March, as part of the first group matches that qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The Iraqi team relied a lot on holding the match at home and among its fans, hoping to win a victory that would keep it in the Asian supplement race leading to the 2022 World Cup, before meeting its Syrian counterpart four days after facing the Emirates in Dubai.
Iraq occupies the fifth place before last in the first group with five points from eight matches, while its UAE counterpart occupies third place with nine points, knowing that the three groups in the third round meet in an Asian playoff, and the winner between them meets the fifth of South America in a global supplement.
