Palestine\u2019s national football team begins its challenge for a place in the next phase of Asia\u2019s 2026 World Cup preliminaries in Sharjah on Thursday, facing off against Lebanon at a neutral venue due to the impact of the Israel-Hamas war in the region.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s opener had originally been scheduled to be played in Beirut before Palestine was set to host Australia the following week but Israel\u2019s response to the attack by Hamas on October 7 forced officials to find new venues.<\/p>\n
Lebanon and Palestine will meet at the Khalid bin Mohammed Stadium in the United Arab Emirates before the Palestinians, who usually host games at Al-Ram\u2019s Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium on the West Bank, take on Australia in Kuwait on November 21.<\/p>\n
Graham Arnold\u2019s Socceroos host Bangladesh in Melbourne before facing Palestine.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s matches mark the start of the second phase of the continent\u2019s qualifiers for the expanded 48-team 2026 World Cup, when Asia will have eight guaranteed berths plus a possible ninth available through an intercontinental playoff.<\/p>\n
The top two finishers in each of the nine groups advance to the third phase, which is scheduled to kick off next September.<\/p>\n
Japan faces Myanmar in Osaka in Group B, which also features Syria and North Korea, while South Korea faces Singapore in Group C, with Thailand taking on China in the other group fixture.<\/p>\n
Iran kicks off its quest for a seventh World Cup appearance against Hong Kong in Group E, where Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also feature.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia\u2019s challenge begins in Group G against Pakistan, which has qualified for the second phase of Asia\u2019s preliminaries for the first time, with Tajikistan taking on Jordan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Lebanon and Palestine will meet at the Khalid bin Mohammed Stadium in the UAE before the Palestinians, who usually host games at Al-Ram\u2019s Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium on the West Bank, take on Australia in Kuwait on November 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-sport-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}