Syria U20

Every stretch since 2013 has been played somewhere else. Damascus never left the badge, but the venue has: recent qualifying rounds have taken the squad through Lach Tray Stadium in Vietnam, Petra Stadium in Jordan, and Do'stlik Stadium in Uzbekistan, with the AFC insisting on neutral ground while the security situation at home rules out matches at the Abbasiyyin Stadium, shut since war damage that year despite its 30,000 seats.

The Syrian Arab Football Association, founded in 1936, runs the side under the name Nosour Qasioun — the Qasioun Eagles — and sends it out in the green and white of the senior team and the national flag.

The point the side keeps being measured against is 1994, when it beat Japan 2–1 in the final of the AFC Youth Championship. Nothing since has matched it: a runner-up finish in 1988, lost to Iraq on penalties, and third place in 1990 sit either side of it, and at world level the closest the age group has come is the quarter-finals of the 1991 FIFA U-20 World Cup, again settled on penalties, against Australia. Iraq and Lebanon remain the games that matter most in Asian youth qualifying.

Hassan Abbas is the name still attached to that 1994 win, one of a squad that went on to senior careers for Syria once the medals from Qasioun were won.