Sport | Football
UAE Under-17s to leave for GCC youth tournament
The UAE Under-17 football team are set to leave today for Saudi Arabia to take part in the GCC youth tournament
- By Sayed AliSenior Reporter
- Published: 00:05 July 29, 2008
Dubai: The UAE Under-17 football team are set to leave today for Saudi Arabia to take part in the GCC youth tournament.
The competition will be held in Abha in southern Saudi Arabia from August 2 to 10 with all the GCC nations participating except Kuwait.
The UAE side will be looking to defend their title after winning the trophy last year.
They returned last week from Tunisia where they held a three weeks training camp.
While there the team clinched the Ain Drahim friendly tournament.
UAE defeated Tunisia 3-1, Saudi Arabia 2-1 and drew with Algeria 3-3 to win the title.
UAE youth coach Ali Ebrahim said: "The training camp was very successful especially the friendly tournament in which we met with strong youth teams preparing for their coming commitments and players benefited from playing against them.
"In Tunisia we settled on our formation, which we will play with in the GCC tournament.
"The most positive thing was the potency of the forward line, scoring eight goals in three matches. Also there were some negatives which we will work hard to get rid of it before the GCC tournament begin next week."
The coach said that participating in the GCC tournament was part of their preparations for the Asian Under-17 championship in Uzbekistan in October.
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