Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) has announced a 22-man squad for the National Football Team’s match against Palestine.

According to a statement by the AFF, Owais Azizi, Hamidullah Wakili, Baktash Akbari, Haroon Amiri, Milad Entezar, Mustafa Hadid, Kanishka Tahir, Banyamin Najm, Husain Alizada, Faisal Shaista, Noorullah Amiri, Mohammad Saber Azizi, Fraidun Hakimi, Amruddin Sharifi, Mustafa Zazai, Zolfaqar Nazari, Merajullah Dad, Adam Najm, Omran Haidari, Omid Popalzai, Milad Salim and Khyber Amani are the 22 men who have been selected to be part of the Afghan squad in the friendly match against Palestine.

The match will be held at Afghanistan Football Federation’s stadium in Kabul on August 19 to mark the Independence Day of Afghanistan. 

The match is a good chance for Afghanistan to prove it can host football events, an AFF official said last week, adding that it will encourage FIFA - Fédération Internationale de Football Association – to remove Afghanistan from the list of the countries which cannot host matches.  

“By hosting the Palestinian team, we will show to FIFA that we can be a good host and we can convince them to take us out of the list of the five countries which are banned to host football matches,” said Ali Kazimi, an official of Afghanistan Football Federation, said last week. 

“The event is important for Afghanistan from a technical point of view, because Palestine is ahead of Afghanistan in the FIFA list,” Kazimi added.

Kabul has so far hosted Pakistan’s national football team in a friendly match in 2013 which ended 3-0 in favor of Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan will play a friendly match with Myanmar in October following their match against Palestine.