For the second time in the space of less than five months, Palestine will lock horns with Comoros. The two sides met for the first time ever in a FIFA Arab Cup playoff in June that saw Palestine run out 5-1 winners.
As their previous encounter was not held during the official FIFA window for international friendlies and qualifiers both sides made due without several stars. In the case of Comoros, this meant that they effectively fielded a group of players that played little to no part in their successful qualification to the 2021 African Cup of Nations. As such, the team Palestine is set to face will be completely different from the one they faced in June.
For their part, Palestine also could not call upon the likes of Mahmoud Wadi, Saleh Chihadeh, and several others- leaving them mostly dependent on the WBPL to source players. They were however, able to field something close to a first team with Oday Dabbagh and Tamer Seyam running riot in the second half to put the game out of reach.
The friendly is set to take place on November 10th in Turkey with Comoros taking on Sierra Leone three days later. It is unclear if Palestine will be able to arrange a friendly with the West African side as well. At the time of writing, FIFA’s match log does not show any such match taking place during the window.
The PFA took the decision to suspend league play in the WBPL to give the national team an opportunity to hold an internal training camp. The national team is also scheduled to start training for the Arab Cup in Egypt on the 17th of November.
The announcement of this upcoming friendly nor the participating squad was not made public by the PFA. From some of the pictures that have been released on their Facebook page it seems that there were call-ups for several uncapped players: Attacking midfielders Shaher Dawood (Islami Qalqilya) and Musa Tarabin (Hilal Al-Quds) as well as defender Yazan Iwaiwi (Shabab Al-Khaleel) were in camp alongside fringe player Mahmoud Awesat and Reebal Dahamshe (Hilal Al-Quds).
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