Jordan have a footballer in their squad who has enjoyed an amazing yet unfulfilled journey. The Jordanian has had a distinguished career, travelling from Catalonia to Madrid and then to Romania where he currently plays for top-flight club Universitatea Craiova.
The player in question is Tha'er Bawab, who has been playing as a No 10 for Jordan since 2005. Bawab migrated to Catalonia, Spain when he was a little child. But just when he started dreaming of representing Barcelona, he was spotted by the scouts of the Catalans' arch-enemy, Real Madrid.
He started out with the third team of the Los Blancos. His performances propelled him to Real Madrid B, the second team, where he met the likes of Juan Mata, Alvaro Negredo, Jose Callejon and Esteban Granero, among others. As a reserve team player, he even trained with galacticos Raul, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, David Beckham and Luis Figo.
However, in the long run, Bawab was unable to establish himself as a Madridista. He returned to Catalonia and stayed there for a year. During this time, he pitted his wits against the likes of Sergio Busquets and Bojan Krkic. There too, he gave way to the intense competition and moved to Romania five years ago.
At the age of 30, Bawab has seen both sides of the coin in that he has experienced both ups and downs in his career. And if there is one thing that he learned by heart from his experiences with the Spanish giants is that he always respects the opposition. For Bawab, Bangladesh are no different as Jordan prepare to meet them tomorrow in the 2018 Fifa World Cup second round qualifier at Bangabandhu National Stadium.
Bawab though, admitted that they have very little knowledge of their tomorrow's opponents.
“I don't know Bangladesh team very well. Our technical staffs saw Bangladesh's last game against Australia. Then we watched the video and analysed the team. I wish to win tomorrow,” the Jordanian forward told the media yesterday during their brief training session at the Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club ground.
“It will be a difficult match as it's an away match. Everyone in the Jordan national team will try our best to win the game. We drew [0-0] with Kyrgyzstan in the last game and it was a disappointing result for us. We were looking for a win but unfortunately we didn't get the full points,” he said before adding, “Having said that, the weather is a big difference between here and Jordan. The humidity here is too high but I hope the condition will be okay for us [tomorrow].”
Jordan came agonisingly close to qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. After topping their group in the final round of the Asian zone qualifiers, Jordan were defeated by Uruguay 5-0 in the play-offs, the final hurdle before the tournament proper.
“I played [against] Uruguay. But this time, it's a difficult situation for us because we are listed in number two [in the points table], behind Australia. This thing gives us boost to collect a lot of points from the away matches in the future, starting from the next game. Then, we have to take every single game step-by-step,” he concluded.
