Abu Dhabi: The UAE Olympic football team may be just one point away from qualifying for the 2012 London Games - which would be a first in the nation's history - but head coach Mahdi Ali and his players are well aware that their most important test is still to come against Uzbekistan on March 14.
"It was a sweet victory." Ali said of the UAE's 1-0 win over Australia here on Wednesday which put them on the top of AFC Group B with 11 points, three more than Uzbekistan.
"But we don't want to celebrate now. We have a crucial match in Tashkent which will decide the team to go to London and I hope we will celebrate after that match."
Regarding the match against Australia, Ali said: "First I want to thank the players and the fantastic fans for the victory. In all our matches in the start of the campaign, we used to possess the ball more and play more entertaining football, but we did not win the result.
"In this match, our objective was to win the points and the players did just that. At this stage of the qualifiers, the results are more important than the performance.
"I am particularly happy with the performance of the defenders and the goalkeeper and I believe they played the bigger role in our victory.
"We were forced to use some players who were away from competitive games for a long time or have returned from injuries, but all the players have done their best for the team. For example Omar Abdul Rahman was away for a long time and he took part as a substitute in four matches and played only one full match for Al Ain, but we needed his services due to the injury to Amer Abdul Rahman.
"I told Omar before the match that he can make a difference with his individual capabilities and he did just that not only by scoring the winner, but also by his penetrating passes and assists in both attack and defence.
"We have to stop our celebrations and start concentrating on our match against Uzbekistan, which will be a matter of life and death for our dreams and I am sure that our players will not let their country down in Tashkent."
Ali added that he did not use star defender and captain Hamdan Al Kamali, the Lyon player, against Australia because he hadn't played a competitive match for 45 days.
"He will be ready for our match in Tashkent and I hope to see him in the team. His presence gave his colleagues a big motivation for the match." Ali concluded.
