Abu Dhabi: The UAE's brave run of success in the 20th Gulf Cup came to an end when they lost their semifinal 0-1 to Saudi Arabia at the 22nd May Stadium in Aden on Thursday night.
Ahmad Abbas struck the match-winner for Saudi Arabia in the 55thn minute to earn a spot in the December 5 final against Kuwait.
Kuwait had earlier in the evening got the better of Iraq 7-6 via the tie-breaker after the teams shared four goals during regular time.
Pedestrian pace
The UAE-Saudi semifinal was played at a pedestrian pace and during the first session there was just one serious attempt to write about when Saudi Arabia's Mohammad Abu Radia headed over off a flag kick.
With Esmail Al Hammadi being tightly marked the UAE were denied much movement up front and their only attempts came through a series of free-kicks. But Subait Khater's feared free-kicks just did not materialize and at the other end Saudi Arabia began to string together a few promising moves.
But their winner came against the run of play as Tayseer Al Jassim snatched the ball from a UAE player and moved in to find an unmarked Ahmad Abbas on the left. Abbas did not have much difficulty in beating Majed Nasser and that 55th minute strike turned out to be the match-winner.
While Khater's free-kicks could not breach the Saudi defence, it was the UAE goal which had a narrow escape when Mohammad Al Shaloub's free-kick was tipped away by Nasser and a little later the post came to the rescue of UAE when Muhannad Aseri's header bounced off it.
