Category: Women’s Football

2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers draw revealed

The Lebanese Women National Team will participate in the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers.

Lebanon have been drawn in group D alongside Myanmar, UAE, and Guam.

The games will be played between 13-25 September 2021.

The winner of the group will advance to the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup.

Myanmar, ranked 10th in Asia and 45th in the FIFA Women’s World Rankings, are the favorites. But the Cedars are more than able to contest the top spot.

Lebanon’s history in continental tournaments

Yesterday, Lebanon failed to qualify for it’s first ever FIFA World Cup when its futsal national team was knocked out due to the “away goal” rule after drawing 0-0 and 1-1 respectively vs Vietnam.

As hard as it can be, this defeat left a soury taste in the mouth of the Lebanese fans as they felt this time it was closer than ever. In it’s history, Lebanon has failed to qualify to a FIFA or AFC tournament 30 times while participating in those tournaments 19 times (Hosting the tournament do not count).

The men’s football national team has tried to qualify to a FIFA world cup 8 times, withdrawing once (1986) and failing 7 times (from 1994 until 2018). the same team also tried to qualify 10 times to the AFC Asian Cup, withdrawing 3 times (1976, 1984 and 2007), failing in 6 campaigns (1972, 1980, 1996, 2004, 2011, 2015) and suceeding once in 2019.

On the other hand, the women’s football team had less tries but all went badly. Our women’s have failed to qualify to the 2015 and 2019 (withdrew) FIFA World Cup. The team also failed to qualify to 2 Asian Cup editions in 2014 and 2018 (withdrew).

The futsal men’s national team is a regular team in the AFC Asian Cup, participating in every edition since 2003 (11 in total). The top 5 finishers in the Asian Cup qualify to the World Cup but we never finished in the top 5 (7 times in the top 8). 2020 Asian Cup was cancelled that’s why there was the play-off tie.

The women’s futsal national team has participated in one Asian Cup (2018) as there was no qualifications. This national team never tried to qualify to a tournament.

The final sport under FIFA’s juridiction is beach soccer. Our men’s national team failed to qualify to the World Cup 4 times (From 2013 until 2019) while qualifying to the 5 last edition of the Asian Cup.

Women’s Football League: The Return

After a long lay-off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the women’s football league is finally making its comeback on Sunday, May 23rd.
The final match week of the women’s senior league (2019/20 season) was played on March 1st, 2020, which saw SAS crowned the champions for the second time in a row, making that a total of five league titles.

Shortly after, an imposed nation-wide lockdown to battle the ongoing health crisis meant the suspension of all sporting events around the country.

Lebanese football then gradually began to return with some categories like the Men’s, Youth, and Under-19 women’s leagues in the summer of 2020, however, the women’s senior league was still put on hold.

It was not until November of that year that a compromise was made to launch a senior level competition by creating a 7-a-side tournament. This championship would serve as a preparatory passage for the senior squads until an official league could be held.

All seven participating clubs left their mark on the tournament in one way or another. Newcomers Super Girls and Sakafi Chhiim, as well as returning club United Tripoli may not have gathered as many wins, but delivered with an abundance of goals, showing potential for later competitions.

Resident senior league clubs EFP and O’Berytus displayed their usual consistent performances, securing third and fourth place respectively.
The top of the table was a tournament long battle between reigning champions SAS and Safa Women’s FC. Although the points were shared, Safa had the upper hand on goal difference until the dramatic final week meeting where SAS was able to defeat them in injury time and claim the title.

With the return of the women’s football league approaching, the senior club squads will be keen on taking their acts from the preparatory championship into it for a successful season.

The start of the league also comes shortly before the WAFF Championship in Jordan, and the Cedars will make use of their time back in regular competition to better replicate the promising performance we witnessed at the Armenia Invitational tournament back in April.

Will the upcoming women’s senior league be a mirror of the preparatory tournament, or will we see some exciting new teams and surprising results?

4 things we learned from Lebanon vs Armenia

After an absence of 814 days, the Lebanese women’s national team returns to action in the Armenia Women’s Football Tournament. In the first game, the Lebanese team lost 2 0 against the hosts in a game that was not bad for the Lebanese side. What can we take from this defeat?

6 players got their debut in this game

Among the 20 players called up to the team, 8 players had not represented the senior team yet. Reeda Wahhab, Nour Njeim and Cynthia Salha started the game while Melanie Ghanimeh, Ghiya Mtairik and Farah El Tayyar made their debut off the bench. The two remaining players without a cap are the two goalkeepers, Perla Nasser and Synal Breich.

Game number 30 in the history of the women’s national team

Since its start in 2006, the Lebanese Women’s national team has played 30 games, winning just 8 of them. The Lebanese team scored 47 goals and received 117 goals.

Tchaylian returns to the National Team

3470 days passed between the last two caps for Nancy Tchaylian for the football national team. During that time, she represented Lebanon in Futsal. This makes it the biggest gap between 2 international appearances for a Lebanese player (if the NT was active still).

We are not far off

One thing this defeat made us sure of, is that our girls are not far off the likes of Armenia. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the girls could not train more than 8 times before flying for the tournament (even the flight was not a smooth one). Nevertheless, it is clear we are on the right track. It will be interesting to see how we perform against Jordan on the 12th.

Football is back!

The Lebanese football association has just announced that the league will resume on the 19th of March after its stoppage since early January.

According to the LFA, the Premier League will restart on the 19th of March while the second division will restart on the 21st. The first round of the Third division will be played on the same day of the Premier League.

In what concerns the youth leagues, the men U-20 league will be back in 13th of March while the men U-16 and women U-19 will restart on the 14th of March.

No information about the FA cup yet!