The UAE national soccer team will be at rest today from playing in the World cup qualifiers, with the other four teams in group B clashing today: North Korea host Saudi Arabia and Iran meet South Korea in Tehran.
The two matches will decide the top of group B at the end of round one. South Korea are on top with seven points, Iran second with five points, Saudi Arabia and North Korea with four points each. The UAE is at the bottom of group B with one point.
The UAE team's coming match will be against North Korea on March 28 in Pyongyang.
Mohammad Khalfan Al Rumaithi, the UAE Football Association's board chairman, said that they will not give up the fight in the coming matches.
"Most of the people say that we are out of the qualifications and we lost the chance to reach the World Cup finals according to our position in group B, but I say we still have hope and we will fight in our remaining four matches. Its true that it will be a difficult task, playing three of our matches away, but we have confidence in our players who pledged that they will spare no effort in defending the UAE colours."
"Football is full of surprises, and there were bad surprises for us in the previous matches. We hope it will be a pleasant surprise for us in the coming four matches," said the FA board chairman.
The FA technical committee chaired by Al Rumaithi approved the UAE national team preparations programme for the coming World cup qualifiers.
The team start preparations with a one-week training camp in China from March 19 during which they will play a warm-up match.
They then leave to Pyongyang on March 26 to meet North Korea two days later and after the match they leave to Riyadh to meet Saudi Arabia on April 1.
The players will then return to their clubs to play in the professional league.
In the first week of May, the team assemble to play a warm-up match on the fifth.
A friendly match against Germany will be held on June 2 at the Al Wasl stadium. On June 6 UAE meet South Korea in the seventh match of the qualifiers at the Al Nasr stadium.