'All we need is a bit of good luck'

Abu Dhabi: Esmail Rashid, former captain and the manager of the UAE's national senior team, said he thought that the UAE Pro Football League (UFL) had demonstrated poor technical standards and had not helped the national team players to improve or showed any new promising young players.

Rashid also expressed his hopes for the team in the 2011 Asian Cup in Qatar, saying the team should be well prepared for the group, which also includes reigning champions, Iraq, Iran and North Korea who won promotion to the finals of this year's World Cup in South Africa.

Gulf News met with Rashid to learn more of his views about the Asian Cup draw and the preparations of the UAE team in the forthcoming period.

 GULF NEWS: How do you rate the Asian Cup group teams?

ESMAIL RASHID: The group is somewhat difficult because all four teams have almost equal standards — except maybe North Korea who have improved greatly recently and deserved to win a seat in the finals of the World Cup. We have played against them and also against Iran in the preliminary qualifiers of the World Cup last year.

Iran are not in their prime now — we faced them twice last year. We lost for a single goal in Tehran and drew 0-0 in Dubai despite being the better team in both matches.

As for Iraq, th ey have not shown the same qualities that earned them the Asian Cup and their participation in the qualifiers of the World Cup was not as expected.

The same story can be said about the UAE team and the decisive factor will be the best preparations for the finals if we want to go further in the the continental competition.

 What is new in the team regarding the line-up?

Unfortunately, the local competition this season did not help the players to improve and we have not seen any new promising youngsters to add to the team. It was sad to see that the clubs did not give the players of the youth team, who took part in the Fifa Under 20 World Cup, a chance to play except Ahmad Khalil in the Al Ahli club and Hamdan Al Kamali in Al Wahda.

We, in the technical and administrative staff of the national team, have been following the players of the past season and we are optimistic of our chances because we have a good preparation programme for the team — for both the Gulf Cup in Yemen in November and the Asian Cup in January. We regard the Gulf Cup as the best preparation for the finals of the Asian Cup which means we should achieve a good result in Yemen to give our players the motive to show their best in Qatar.

 How are you going to prepare the team?

We have a short training camp that will start on May 22 in Austria where we will play a friendly match against Moldova before moving the camp to Germany where we will play a friendly against Algeria on June 5 before returning the next day home to allow the players to take a rest before joining their clubs for their training camps to prepare for the new season.

We will also hold an external training camp before the Gulf Cup and will play some strong friendly matches.

We have already prepared a preliminary list of about 30 players to be included in the training camp and hopefully all of them will not sustain any injuries in the remaining matches of the season.

We are looking forward with great optimism because we believe that our hard work, by the technical and administrative staff and players of the team, will surely achieve good results in both the Gulf Cup and the Asian Cup, all we need is a bit of good luck.