The UAE Football Association (FA) has thrown open the door for foreign players after keeping them out for 17 years. Minister of Information and Culture and the FA President Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan announced at the Armed Forces Officers Club in Abu Dhabi, that foreign players will return to the local football competitions starting next season. The local clubs have been urged to apply professionalism to the game as a main step to improve the UAE football following a series of disappointing results at both regional and continental levels in the recent years. The decision is optional and not compulsory and the clubs that do not want to use the services of foreign players have the right not to. As for professionalism, the clubs have been asked by the FA to start applying it on a limited number of their players. Shaikh Abdullah said the clubs would be given necessary help within the resources available. “We are convinced that these steps will help improve soccer in the UAE”, he added
Other important events
1799 French troops capture Italian city of Naples.
1849 Dr Elizabeth Blackwell receives the first doctor of medicine degree awarded to an American woman.
1878 Britain sends fleet to Constantinople at Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s request.
1913 Nazim Pasha is murdered in Turkish coup, and Shevket Pasha forms ministry.
1918 Soviet government officially severs relations with the church.
1958 Marcos Pérez Jiménez, President of Venezuela, is deposed in a coup and fled to the US.
1961 Venezuela adopts constitution.
1964 Indonesia and Malaysia agree to ceasefire in their undeclared border war.
1968 North Korea seizes the US Navy’s ship, the USS Pueblo, charging it with intrusion into its territorial waters on a spying mission.
1985 Debate in Britain’s House of Lords is carried live on television for the first time.
1986 At least 38 people die when a fire breaks out at the five-star Hotel Siddarth Continental in New Delhi.
1989 Salvador Dali dies of heart failure at the age of 84 in Catalonia, Spain.
1991 The Angolan government accepts a peace plan that ends 15-year-old civil war with UNITA rebels.
1997 Madeleine Albright became the first female US Secretary of State.
1998 UAE Football Association has thrown open the door for foreign players.
1999 Jordan’s King Hussain strips his brother Hassan Bin Talal of his title as crown prince.
2002 Afghan airline Ariana resumes flight services between New Delhi and Kabul.
2005 Viktor Yushchenko is sworn in as president of Ukraine.
2006 Ugandan rebels ambush UN peacekeepers in Congo, killing eight of them.
2009 Rwanda detains Congo rebel leader Laurent Nkunda as he flees joint operation.
2010 US Marines mark the end of nearly seven years in Iraq by handing the Army their command of Anbar province.
2011 A bus slams into an oil tanker near Nooriabad, Pakistan, killing 32 people.
2012 Mohammad Sa’ad Al Katatni becomes the speaker of Egypt’s first freely-elected parliament.
2013 A fashion show is held inside a moving Dubai Metro as part of the 18th Dubai Shopping Festival.
2015 Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz dies, succeeds by his brother Salman.
2017 US President Donald Trump sign to withdraw from an Asia-Pacific accord.
