Youssef Haddad
Special to The Daily Star

Olympic Beirut Football Club will take on Jordanian club Wahadat Friday at the Amman International Stadium in the first round second leg game of the Arab Champions League. The Lebanese club lost the first leg game 2-1, which was held in Beirut last Friday.
The players from the Beirut club are facing a difficult task as the Lebanese team needs a win by at least a two goal margin. The Jordanian club will enjoy the support of its home crowd, which will make the Lebanese club’s task even harder.
In light of this difficult challenge, Olympic Beirut’s technical staff will have to make some major changes in the team’s tactics, a more offensively oriented line-up would probably prove to be more rewarding than a defensive one in order to avoid elimination from the tournament’s first round.
The Jordanian club dominated the game held in Beirut and were able to score twice. Their key player is Jordanian national team striker Mahmoud Shalabiya, who scored the opening goal against Olympic last Friday, will force the Lebanese team to mark him one-on-one to limit his dangerous penetrations.
As a sign of support to Olympic Beirut, the Lebanese Football Federation (LFF) revoked an earlier decision which mandated that Youssef Mohammed skip the game in order to be physically fit for a coming national team’s match.
The federation had previously decided to keep Mohammed in the country to avoid any injury the player might suffer in his game with Olympic, which would prevent him from playing for the Lebanese national team against the North Koreans on Monday as part of the Asian Cup qualifiers.
Olympic Beirut’s technical director Shafik Taher told Agence France Press on Thursday that the LFF were allowing Mohammed to travel to Amman. Taher thanked Jordanian club’s officials “for helping Olympic Beirut’s international player Krikor Alozian to get an entry visa to Jordan.”
The Lebanese club’s delegation, headed by Taher, left Thursday for Amman and is composed of the team technical manager Mohammed Sahel, coach Samir Mahjoub, and players Ahmed Sakr, Khaled Homsi, Krikor Alozian, Youssef Mohammed, Nabil Baalbaki, Youssef Baalbaki, Ali Mtairik, Izzat Khalil, Abdel-Rahman Bella, Mohammed Rida, Abbas Attweh, Faisal Antar, Hussein Oleik, Marcilio Da Silva, Edilson Da Silva, Silvio Costa and Pierre Issa.
This is the third game Olympic has played in a period of one week. Six of the club’s players from the Beiruti club will participate in the Lebanese national team’s game against North Korea.