Dubai: Defending champions Fohood Zabeel were among the casualties as the four semi-finalists were decided in the futsal competition at the Third Nad Al Sheba (NAS) Sports Tournament on Monday night.
Surprise will take on Fohood Jumeirah and XCAT will battle last year’s runners-up Al Jokar in the two semi-finals that will not feature former two-time champions Fohood Zabeel for the first time in the competition.
Surprise defeated a plucky Tornado 5-4, while Fohood Jumeirah secured a 5-3 win to knock out the defending champions led by two-time Fifa Futsal Player of the Year Ricardinho.
Later in the night, XCAT staged a remarkable recovery after being 1-5 down to pack off Al Zeer 8-6, while last year’s runners-up Al Jokar were totally focused with a comparatively easy 6-1 win over the Hamdan Heritage Centre.
In Wednesday’s semi-finals, Fohood Jumeirah will take on Surprise at 11.30 pm, while XCAT will face Al Jokar at 1 am.
“There are no easy matches from now on,” Diego Brando Martins, the man of the match in the Surprise team’s win against Tornado, told Gulf News.
“The best futsal players from all over the world are here, so this is perhaps the best tournament that I have played in a long time. We did the job in the quarter-finals by being focused, so we need to keep our concentration in the semi-finals as well,” he added.
With most of the best futsal players at this tournament, all attention was on the match involving the defending champions and Fohood Jumeirah.
Played before a packed indoor hall at the NAS Sports Complex, it was two-time former Fifa Player of the Year Ricardinho who opened the scoring for the defending champions in the fifth minute with a snap shot. But Bader Ebrahim Saeed restored parity four minutes later.
Substitute Daniel Albuquerque, who was assigned the task of marking Ricardinho, put Fohood Jumeirah ahead in the 13th minute and they managed to hold on to the lead going into the half-time break.
In the second half, Ricardinho made it 2-2 in the fifth minute, only to see Bader Ebrahim Saeed come up with his second goal. Ronald Mateus da Silva then added another goal within 15 seconds to take the match out of reach of the defending champions.
However, Fohood Zabeel hung in and had a brief glimmer of hope as the newly-drafted Carlos Jimenez Ortiz pulled one back. And just when they went all out for an equaliser Fernando Maciel Gonsalves made it 5-3 to shut the door on the defending champions and their bid to win the title for the third year in a row.
