Today's Edition
ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)
Two defensive errors against hosts Kuwait have meant that the UAE football team have their hopes in the Gulf Cup left hanging by a thread after a 2-1 loss late on Tuesday night.
The UAE started off brilliantly at the Jaber Al Ahmad Stadium in Kuwait City with a goal in the fifth minute only to allow their rivals to equalise 10 minutes later. In a game that UAE dominated, all the effort came undone in the 89th minute when the hosts found the winner after the Whites went down to 10 men.
Both goals conceded by the UAE were due to mistakes by defender Khalifa Al Hammadi. The result moved Kuwait and Oman, who edged out Qatar 2-1 in the earlier match, to four points each and at the top of the table. The UAE and Qatar have a draw and win by identical margins.
Paulo Bento's UAE side now face Oman in a must-win game in the final group contest on Friday. "The situation is difficult, but it's not impossible. We have to recover, we should analyse and then prepare. Of course not on the pitch because we don't have too much time to train given that we have only 72 hours," Bento said after the match.
"It's still possible to qualify for the next round even if we know that the opponent is strong and the situation is not easy. We don't know what will happen until the end of the group phase. Yes, this is the situation that we created in the game against Kuwait. I'm not making excuses but we are responsible for the situation we are in."
Bento refused to blame it all on Al Hammadi. "Khalifa has had very good performances with us since the beginning of the World Cup qualifiers. In this game, he got into a situation but it's not just his mistakes that we lost the game.
"We created many scoring opportunities. However, the problem is that we gave our opponents the chances to score as well. I think we didn't control the game as well as we should," Bento said.
However, Al Hammadi's errors were similar in nature. The centre-back let Mohammad Dahan steal the ball from him side-step past goalkeeper Khalid Eisa for Kuwait's equaliser.
The goal came after Harib Abdulla had latched on to a long ball and lobbed it past the onrushing custodian Khaled Al Rashidi even before two defenders could intercept in.
The ball was headed into the net and Caio Canedo guided it in with his head past the imaginary net line to get his name on the scoreboard. UAE still had many chances to score but failed to find the target. Shots by Fabio Lima and Marcus Meloni were saved by Al Rashidi while Yahya Al Ghassani's effort hit the crossbar.
However, with a minute left, centre-back Kouame Autonne was sent off for his second bookable offence. In those nervous moments, Al Hammadi sent a poor back-pass towards Eisa, which was intercepted by substitute Moath El Enezi and he piled on the woes for the defender.
