Sport | Football

UAE gear up for World Cup dream

The UAE squad have enough respect for Kuwait, but feels that the team has the resources to put it past them.

  • By Yasir Abbasher, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 23:31 February 4, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • Image Credit: Gulf News archive
  • UAE libero Basheer Saeed (right) believes the hosts have enough fire power to put it across Kuwait in their World Cup qualifier tomorrow.

Abu Dhabi: The UAE squad have enough respect for Kuwait, their rivals in the 2010 World Cup qualifier on Wednesday, but feels that the team has the resources to put it past them.

This, despite the team failing to score a single goal in their last six friendly matches. "Even before the Gulf Cup last year, we lost in a number of friendlies, but finally went on to win the event," said Basheer Saeed, the UAE libero.

The team, lsed by their head coach Frenchman Bruno Metsu, held training session yesterday, a day before facing Kuwait at the Mohammad Bin Zayed Stadium at 7:15 pm on Wednesday in a Group E match which also features Iran and Syria.

The four teams will be competing for two berths in the fourth round of the qualifiers, from where four teams will progress to the finals while the fifth placed team will enter a play-off against a team from the CONCACAF zone.

"We are not worried about failing to score in the last friendlies. We have enough confidence in our strikers to score in the official matches," Saeed told Gulf News yesterday.

"The friendly matches are for ironing our mistakes and trying new tactics, it is not essential to win all of them. We know what it takes to win official matches and that is what my colleagues are determined to do.

In the first round, the UAE won 6-0 on aggregate against Vietnam in the two matches, 1-0 in Hanoi and 5-0 at Mohammad Bin Zayed Stadium and had registered an emphatic 3-1 victory over Kuwait at the same venue last year in the Gulf Cup.

"That is history now. We should forget both results and concentrate upon the match tomorrow," Basheer concluded. The UAE players were high on morale as they were winding up their preparations.

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