Today, the draw for the 25th Arab National Basketball Championship, hosted by Egypt from December 26 to January 3, took place. Group A includes Mauritania, Algeria, Somalia, and Libya, while Group B consists of Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Tunisia, and Morocco. The tournament will follow a single round-robin format, with the top four teams from each group advancing to the quarter-finals. In the semi-finals, the first team from Group A will face the fourth from Group B, while the first from Group B will face the fourth from Group A, and the second will meet the third in the opposite group.
In a match, Egypt will meet the UAE. The draw ceremony was attended by Dr. Magdy Abu Freikha, Deputy Chairman of the Arab Federation and President of the Egyptian Federation, who conveyed greetings from Major General Ismail Al-Qarqawi, President of both the Arab and UAE Federations, along with Abdul Rahman Al-Mas'ad, Deputy Chairman of the Arab Federation, Hassan Youssef, Board Member of the Federation, and Brigadier Abdullah Shalabi, Secretary-General of the Federation, as well as Wael Lutfi, General Manager of the Federation.
On another note, the UAE national team will leave at 3 PM tomorrow, Thursday, heading to Cairo for a training camp that will include one friendly match against the Egyptian team on Saturday. The delegation is headed by Abdul Latif Al-Fardan, Deputy Chairman of the Federation, and includes Dr. Munir Bin Habib as the head coach, Salem Ateeq and Jassim Abdul-Razzaq as assistant coaches, Rashid Al-Nuqbi, General Manager of National Teams, administrator Ali Al-Hamadi, physiotherapist Rami Helal, and 14 players: Jassim Mohammed, Rashid Nasser Al-Zaabi, Rashid Salem from Al-Bataih, Qais Omar, Ahmed Abdul-Latif, and Hamid Abdul-Latif from Shabab Al-Ahli, Omar Khaled Al-Amri, Mahmoud Waseem, and Mohammed Asad from Sharjah, Mamadou Anjai, Hamad Ashour, Hassan Abdullah, and Faisal Mohammed from Al-Nasr, and Abdul Aziz Khalifa from Al-Wasl.
Commenting on the draw, Rashid Al-Nuqbi confirmed that his team is in a tough group and will exert every effort to achieve the best results and benefit from the tournament as part of their preparations for the final Asian stage, which they will start with a match against the Bahraini team on February 23 in Manama, followed by a match against Syria in Dubai on February 26, and concluding the first half of the season with a match against Lebanon in November.
