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Doha, Qatar: Qatar’s Under-23 national football team is stepping up preparations for their Asian Games campaign, with coach Jose Angel Lacunza also using domestic competition to give his young players valuable match experience.

Qatar will open their Asian Games campaign against Republic of Korea on September 15 before taking on Saudi Arabia three days later on September 18.

With the tournament fast approaching, Lacunza believes the team’s participation in the Jetour League is providing an important platform for the players to develop and gain experience against senior opposition. betsport24.es

The Spanish coach has welcomed the opportunity to compete in the Second Division, saying the regular matches are helping both the coaching staff and players prepare for the challenges ahead.

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The Asian Games men’s football tournament will feature 15 teams, with the competition running from September 14 to October 3 across venues in Japan’s Chubu and Kansai regions.

The tournament will be played by Under-23 national teams, with squads allowed to include up to three overage players.

Qatar were drawn in Group D with Republic of Korea and Saudi Arabia. The top two teams from each group will advance to the quarter-finals.

Republic of Korea enter the tournament as defending men’s champions.

For Qatar, the immediate focus will be on building rhythm and ensuring the players are ready for the two group matches, with the Jetour League providing Lacunza with another opportunity to assess his squad before the Asian Games.

Doha, Qatar: Qatar’s fencing team is heading to the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, with a clear goal: win the country’s first-ever medal in the sport at the Games. The event runs from September 19 to October 4.

Nine fencers will represent Qatar: Ali Turki Awida, Khalid Arif Hussein, Abdullah Ismail Khalifa, Abdulrahman Bourghrib, Abdulrahman Al-Jadra, Mohammed Abdulali, Yousef Abdul-Tawab, Ali Al-Khalif, and Isabelle Bettadini, the team’s only female competitor. They are part of a much larger Qatari delegation of 243 athletes — 184 men and 59 women — competing in 26 sports at the Games.

Zamel Al-Shammari, a board member of the Qatar Fencing Federation, is leading the delegation. Three coaches — Ines Boubakri, Alvaro Felipe Monteiro, and Hugues Thierry Dergal — oversee the team.

The team has trained hard for this moment.

The men held a camp at Aspire Academy from August 23 to 29, while the women trained in Italy from August 17 to 25.

Both squads will finish their preparation with one last camp in Tokyo, from September 13 to 20, just before competition begins.

The Aspire Academy camp drew fencers from six countries besides Qatar: the Netherlands, Greece, Argentina, Malaysia, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia.

In total, 66 fencers took part, including Saudi Arabia’s Khalifa Al-Amiri, who won bronze in épée at the World Championships in Hong Kong, and the Netherlands’ Tristan Tullen, an Olympic fencer who won the Doha Grand Prix in January.

Sixteen coaches ran 12 training sessions over six days, giving Qatari fencers a chance to test themselves against different styles from Europe, Asia, and the Arab world.

Khalid Suwaid, senior administrative expert at the Qatar Fencing Federation, said the camp was a major boost for the team.

Speaking to Qatar News Agency, he said the goal now is not just to compete, but to finish among Asia’s top four teams and fight for medals.

Qatar first competed in fencing at the Asian Games when it hosted the event in 2006.

Since then, the team has taken part in every edition — Guangzhou 2010, Incheon 2014, Jakarta-Palembang 2018, and Hangzhou 2023 — without winning a medal.

That changed in October 2025. At the Asian Fencing Championships for under-23s in Kuala Lumpur, Qatar’s épée team beat the Philippines and Thailand before losing the final to Uzbekistan by a single point. The silver medal was Qatar’s first-ever Asian medal in fencing. The team behind it: Abdulrahman Al-Jadra, Yousef Abdul-Tawab, Mohammed Abdulali, and Ali Al-Khalif.

The Kuala Lumpur medal was part of a wider run of good results. At the 2023 World Combat Games in Riyadh, Qatar won four medals: gold in men’s foil team (Awida, Hussein, and Khalifa), individual bronze in foil for Khalifa, bronze in men’s épée team (Meshal Al-Qahtani, Mohammed Al-Awlan, Mohammed Abdulali, and Mohammed Al-Hazza), and bronze in women’s épée team (Haya Diab, Sara Diab, and Sheikha Jassim Ali).

At the 2025 West Asian Championships, Qatar won 12 medals in total — six gold, two silver, and four bronze.

The team also took gold in team foil at the 2025 Arab Championships in Bahrain, thanks to Abdullah Ismail and Khalid Aref, and added a gold and a silver in foil at the 2026 Gulf Games in Doha.

There is young talent coming through too.

Isabelle Bettadini reached the quarterfinals at the Asian Junior Fencing Championships in Singapore last month.

Hong Kong: An inaugural FIFA ASEAN Cup will take place later this month featuring 14 teams with matches played in Indonesia and Hong Kong, organisers said on Thursday.

The 11 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and three guest sides -- Hong Kong, Pakistan and Bangladesh -- will play in two divisions from September 24.

Eight teams will contest the top-tier Division 1 -- hosts Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

They will be split into two sections of four with the winners contesting the first FIFA ASEAN Cup final on October 5.

The second-tier Division 2 will be hosted by Hong Kong and also involve Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Timor-Leste, split into two three-team sections with the winners advancing to a final on October 3.

"The FIFA ASEAN Cup was launched to provide national teams with meaningful competitive opportunities," said FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

"The tournament will strengthen football ties across Southeast Asia."

تبدأ منافسات النسخة العشرين من دورة الألعاب الآسيوية 2026 في مدينة ناغويا ومحافظة آيتشي اليابانية. وتقدم beIN SPORTS، شبكة القنوات الرياضية الرائدة في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا، تغطية حصرية ومباشرة تتجاوز 1,700 ساعة عبر باقة تضم 16 قناة، وتمتد على مدار 25 يوماً متواصلاً، بدءاً من البرامج التمهيدية وصولاً إلى الحفل الختامي. ويتنافس ما يصل إلى 10 آلاف رياضي في 461 فعالية ضمن 43 رياضة في دورة العام الجاري، التي تنطلق رسمياً في 19 سبتمبر وتستمر حتى 4 أكتوبر، على أن تبدأ بعض المنافسات قبل تسعة أيام من حفل الافتتاح. وإلى جانب الرياضات التقليدية مثل ألعاب القوى والسباحة والجمباز، تنضم خمس رياضات جديدة إلى منافسات هذا العام؛ إذ تسجل رياضات البادل، والفنون القتالية المختلطة، وركوب الأمواج، والأسلوب الحر في دراجات بي ام إكس، وتيك بول، ظهورها الأول في دورة الألعاب الآسيوية المنعقدة في اليابان.
وقال محمد البدر، مدير قنوات beIN الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا: «تُعد دورة الألعاب الآسيوية المسابقة الرياضية الأكبر على مستوى القارة، ونحن فخورون بتقديم تغطية شاملة من الاستوديو والميدان لمشاهدينا في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا مرة أخرى. وتلتزم beIN SPORTS بتسليط الضوء على أفضل المواهب الرياضية من مختلف أنحاء آسيا. ونتطلع إلى بث أكثر من 1,700 ساعة من التغطية خلال الأسابيع القليلة المقبلة، والتركيز بشكل خاص على أكثر من 1,000 رياضي عربي يُتوقع مشاركتهم في الفعالية».