Bad Bany. Tammer Bany Odeh accepts Jordan call-up

The WBA attacker was close to joining Palestine in March before a last minute change of heart.

With the appointment of a new coaching staff in December 2024 Palestine has endeavored to expand its player pool by calling up more players based in the diaspora. In multiple interviews with Football Palestine Ehab Abu Jazar has said that lowering the average age of the team has been amongst his greatest accomplishment to date.

That work started with his first camp in March where the previously uncapped Hamed Hemdan and Khaled Al-Nabris were called in alongside the Sweden born duo of Adam Kaied and Assad Al-Hamlawi.

There was wide speculation that a third Scandinavian player would join the fold- Tammer Bany Odeh. The attacker had just completed a £3.3 Million to West Bromwich Albion in the English Championship. His ability to unbalance defences with his ball carrying is what convinced the side to hand him a 3.5 year contract in spite of the fact that he had only appeared in 15 matches in the Danish topflight with Randers.

At the time, the coaching staff was slightly perturbed that word of Bany Odeh’s potential call up was leaked. There was hope that he would eventually end up with the national team soon enough.

That never did materialize and with today’s news that the 22 year old has accepted a call up from Jordan it might never come to be. In hindsight, perhaps the reason why the coaching staff was so peeved about news leaking was because they wanted to hide him from prying eyes.

This is not the first time Jordan has tried to poach players from Palestine. In 2010, Jordan invited Omar Jarun to a training camp in spite of the fact that he was cap-tied to Palestine. In 2018, Vital Borklemans attempted to coax Nazmi Albadawi to represent Al-Nashama.

The Jordanians were successful on other occasions convincing Shareef Adnan to file a nationality switch in 2011 after he represented Palestine thrice in 2009.

Jordan has been trying hard to convince Cardiff City’s Yousef Salech and it was widely rumored that he would indeed accept the call-up. That has not come to pass and instead, Tammer Bany Odeh joins the fold for a team that is World Cup bound but bereft of depth in several positions.

Banny Odeh has struggled with injury this seasons and has yet to make a league start for West Brom.