Abu Dhabi: “Together We Can” is the slogan adopted by the UAE for their 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying campaign and they thrillingly embraced it by winning their opening Group B encounter 2-1 away to Japan yesterday.
It was a sensational, backs-to-the wall triumph by Mahdi Ali’s men, achieved courtesy of two sublime goals by the striker Ahmad Khalil following Keisuke Honda’s 11th-minute opener for Japan at a throbbing Saitama Stadium.
The UAE will next target another upset when they host the reigning Asian champions, Australia, in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday as they bid to reach their second World Cup after Italia 1990.
And given their indomitability and the quality of players such as Khalil, who would bet against them achieving this and a top-two finish next September to guarantee automatic progress to Russia 2018?
“It was indeed difficult [to beat Japan on their own turf], but nothing is impossible and we have proven that today,” the midfielder Omar Abdul Rahman said later. “I’d like to congratulate the Rulers of the UAE, those who attended and those watching at home on TV. This performance was the least we could do to pay them back.”
Meanwhile, the UAE coach, Mahdi Ali, was typically pragmatic.
“I’m very happy for the result and hopefully it gives us more confidence but, at the end of the day, it’s only one game and one step from 10 and we haven’t achieved many things yet even with this win,” he said.
Took the lead
The four-time Asian champions Japan, who are ranked 25 places above the UAE at 49 in the Fifa rankings, took the lead through Honda’s header from Hiroshi Kiyotake’s free-kick.
They laid siege to the UAE’s goal throughout, firing 12 shots on target as opposed to the visitors’ two, but were guilty of wasteful finishing from the likes of Shinji Kagawa and denied by Khalid Eisa’s heroics in the away goal.
The Samurai Blue can also feel rightly aggrieved that Takuma Asano’s close-range effort in the 77th minute was adjudged to have not crossed the goal-line after Eisa clawed it away.
Television replays proved it should have been a goal, but Ali’s heroes did not need to rely wholly on good fortune in this pulsating, end-to-end encounter.
Cheered on by a small band of supporters in a sell-out crowd of 63,700, the plucky Whites mounted a valiant rearguard action and also threatened on the counter-attack.
Khalil proved why he is the reigning Asian player of the year with his 12th and 13th goals of the qualifying campaign – and what gorgeous efforts they were.
In the 20th minute, he lashed in a curling free-kick from the edge of the box that evaded Shusaku Nishikawa’s grasp and crashed into the net off the underside of the bar.
Nine minutes after the break, Khalil produced more brilliance with an audacious ‘Panenka’ penalty after Shinji Kagawa and Ryota Oshima combined to bring down Esmail Al Hammadi in the box.
This evoked memories of Omar Abdul Rahman’s chipped effort in the UAE’s penalty shootout victory over the Japanese in the 2015 Asian Cup quarter-finals.
“We are very disappointed from the bottom of our hearts,” the Japan coach, Vahid Halilhodzic, said.
“Our opponents showed a better performance and the one-on-one duels we needed to win more, they were better organised and we knew how they would play but two or three players on the UAE were on a very high level and they were great players and I have to accept that.”
