The Basketball Association introduces the new coach for the Syrian men's team

Damascus-Sana

The Basketball Association presented the new coach of the Syrian American men's national team, Joseph Salerno, during a press conference held today at the Damaroos Hotel in Damascus.

The coach Salerno is accompanied on his new coaching assignment by his assistant from Canada, Geoffrey Morrison, in addition to the newcomer to our team, the American naturalized player, George Keel.

 Salerno said, “Before coming to Syria to take on the task of coaching the national team, I searched for everything related to the Syrian national basketball team, because training a new team is a challenge for me, so I will work on developing my entire training experience to develop the level of the Syrian team and bring it to a good level to compete strongly in its next matches in Asian Qualifiers ”.

The American player Kiel expressed his happiness to be in the national team and his readiness to do his utmost to achieve positive results with the national team in the qualifiers, expressing his happiness with what he saw in Syria and its loving people.

The interim president of the Basketball Association, Eng. Alaa Gokh-ji, indicated that the focus will be on the next two matches for our team with Qatar and Iran in the first-class qualifiers to start the next stage, pointing out that the preparations for our team during the next few period include an external training camp in Russia (Kazan) being During the team a number of test matches.

A member of the temporary game association, Tarif Qoutrash, explained that the Syrian teams receive great attention, as the necessary preparations were provided for the team by providing an external training camp and under the supervision of a foreign coach, noting the strong will that the players arm and their great ambition to achieve victory in their next match to be an incentive to continue the qualifiers. In high spirits.

Our team includes players Rami Morjana, Anas Shaban, Majd Arbasha, Hani Idribi, Anthony Bakr, Omar Sheikh Ali, Tariq al-Jabi, Ammar Ghamian, Muhammad Hadri, Zakaria al-Hussein, Jamil Sadir, Sharif al-Ush, Majd Abu Aita, George Nazarian, Tawfiq Saleh, Wael Jalilati, Ishaq Obeid, Abdel Wahab al-Hamwi, Omar Idlibi and George Kil.

The 39-year-old coach Salerno started his coaching career in 2008 and two years later became the first coach of the Vermont Frost Heights team. He coached the Canadian Summer Side team for six years from 2011 to 2017 and won with him the Best Coach Award in the Canadian League in 2013 and took over the Moncton Magic team and won the 2019 League title and was chosen the best coach In the Canadian League in 2019 and 2020 and has achieved 208 career wins so far.

As for the 24-year-old Kiel player, he played in the Bosnian League with the Ijokia team, won the Canadian League title with Moncton Magic and won the award for best player in the finals of the tournament in 2019 before playing for the Hong Kong Eastern team.

Our team beat its Saudi counterpart by 75-70 points within the first window of the qualifiers for the Asian Championship, noting that it opened its qualifying campaign by losing 48-94 points against Iran in Group E.

The qualifiers include six groups in which four teams compete in each of them, where the first and second of each group qualify directly at the end of the Asian qualifiers to the Asian Championship to be the total of the qualified twelve teams, while the third-place teams in the six groups play periodically from one stage, of which four teams qualify. To the Asian Cup, to be the total of sixteen teams.