Abu Dhabi: Algeria, one of the 32 finalists in the World Cup in South Africa, beat the UAE with a single goal from the penalty spot in their friendly match held on Saturday night in Germany.
This was the last preparatory match for the two teams before the UAE return home, early today, and the Algerians headed to South Africa.
Both coaches, Rabah Sa'adane of Algeria and Strechko Katanec of the UAE, have expressed their pleasure at the close match and confirmed that they are happy with their players' performance.
"I am satisfied with the performance of the players specially in defence and I know we still have some work to do before we start our campaign in the finals," Sa'adane said after the match.
Algeria have lost four of the five friendly matches they played in preparations for the finals.
The UAE, preparing for the Gulf Cup in Yemen in November and the Asian Cup in Qatar in January, have played their best organised match in a long time and have, for the first time, recently played with almost all of their teams in the training camp.
The camp started on May 22 in Austria where they defeated Moldova in another friendly.
Katanec has given a chance to the new young players he selected for the team in the absence of their more experienced colleagues who were injured. The youngsters were keen to show their true worth especially Amer Abdul Rahman, Thiyab Awanah, Sultan Al Ghfiri, Saeed Al Kathiri and Ali Khaseef who really added strength to the team.
And despite Algeria doing most of the attacking in the first half — in front of more than 13,000 of their fans who came from all over Europe to cheer them before leaving to South Africa — the UAE played a solid defensive game depending upon counter attacking moves by Ahmad Khalil and Esmail Matar.
Six minutes after the break, Subait Khater, who was the UAE captain in the match, handled the ball inside the box and Karim Ziani, Algeria's attacking midfielder, converted correctly for the game's only goal.
"The only goal we scored was from the penalty spot although we have three strikers. We have a week before our first match in the World Cup and we will be working on both the defence and attack." Sa'adane said.
The UAE players will take a short rest before joining their clubs next month to start their preparations for the new season which will kick off on August.
