Al Ain to take ‘great confidence’ from big win

Abu Dhabi: Al Ain’s authoritative 4-0 victory over Ajman in the Arabian Gulf League on Wednesday night was an assurance that the team is in good shape ahead of their make-or-break match against Al Hilal in the AFC Champions League next week.

Al Ain have to recover a three-goal deficit to have any chance of qualifying for the final after they lost 3-0 in Saudi Arabia last week. It was important for them to build some momentum ahead of next Tuesday’s outing and they delivered with an impressive all-round show against Ajman.

Mohammad Abdul Rahman, Miroslav Stoch, Asamoah Gyan and Mohammed Fawzy all scored as Al Ain made it two wins from two in the league so far this season.

Unusually, Abdul Rahman took up an attacking midfielder’s role, with his brother and ever reliable star medio Omar rendering support from behind.

Omar was marked into submission during the first leg against Al Hilal and this move looks like a change in tactics on the part of coach Zlatko Dalic.

“I’m well aware that all eyes are on us and everyone wants us to move forward in the AFC Champions League. But today [Wednesday] our goal was to win the match against Ajman,” the Croatian said. “This game was important for the team and the result will give us great confidence before facing Al Hilal and, hopefully, we can achieve the desired result.

“The players executed things as per the plans and that was excellent. They followed the technical guidance that we gave to them before the start of the match and that’s a good sign ahead of the Hilal match.”

Despite taking a 3-0 lead, Dalic chose not to rest his key players until the end and afterwards he explained: “Resting players sometimes can be negative, especially as a majority of them did not play for about 17 days when they joined their national teams. It was important for them to be involved with each other for as long as possible so that they can regain a level of collective performance.”

Al Ain’s defence also received a much-needed boost with right-back Fawzy coming on as a substitute following an injury lay-off. Fawzy got about 10 minutes to test his fitness and he even scored in injury time to boost his confidence.