FOOTBALL – Newly appointed Bahrain senior men’s football national team head coach Felix Sanchez arrived in the kingdom yesterday, a national team official confirmed with the GDN.
The Spaniard was announced earlier this week as having reached an agreement with the Bahrain Football Association (BFA) to fill the role vacated by former head tactician Dragan Talajic.
Sanchez’s schedule of activities in the coming days while in Bahrain is unknown, but he will reportedly be attending games in this weekend’s fifth matchweek of the 2026-27 Nasser bin Hamad Bahrain Premier Football League.
The national team official added that the 50-year-old’s introductory Press conference has yet to be scheduled, and that it will likely take place in the first week of November.
The BFA had said that Sanchez will officially begin his tenure with Bahrain during the next Fifa international match window, scheduled between November 9 and 17.
He will be tasked with a pair of major competitions in the coming months, including the AFC Asian Cup 2027, currently scheduled for January and February, as well as the continental qualifiers for the Fifa World Cup 2030 which kick off in March.
Sanchez will also hope to end Bahrain’s recent poor run of form, which included losses in all three of their preliminary round games at the recently concluded 27th Gulf Cup.
Those defeats are part of an alarming losing streak since the nationals took the title in the 26th Gulf Cup in January of 2025.
Since then, they were booted out of continental qualifying for the Fifa World Cup 2026.