Beach Football: The Road To Rio

Al Mamzar beach sprung to life Tuesday night as the Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup 2007 Asian qualifying round kicked off. Six nations are vying for three spots at the finals to be held later this year at Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana Beach.

China and Bahrain put on a stellar opening show with a narrow 2-1 win for the Gulf side. Then the home fans were treated to a goalscoring feast by the UAE boys who romped to a 6-2 victory over India to go top of their group.

Japan and Iran are the other two competing teams.
The Emiratis were in their seats well before the night's big match got underway and did not have to wait too long to get their own beach party going.

An early Qambar Ali brace followed by a cracking long range effort by Haider Mohammad left the Indians shell-shocked as a one-sided encounter looked ominous.

But in an enthralling end to the first period, the newcomers made their presence felt with two quickfire goals in the space of a minute from Ajay Acharya and Venicio Gonsalves to spark hopes of what seemed an unlikely comeback.

That eventually proved to be a minor blip for Brazilian coach Marcelo Mendes's boys though as they ran amok in the second and third periods which took the game away from the Indians – much to the disappointment of the latter's small but vocal group of supporters.

Mendes was pleased with his team's response to their mini-dilemma and said: "It's not easy to have won this match by a four goal margin as all the competing teams can draw confidence from the two quick goals India scored."

For India, it was not how they would have been hoping to bring in the country's 60th birthday but it was still a remarkable show from a team playing in their first official beach football match. They had the shortest possible preparation time as revealed by star player and former India international Bruno Coutinho.

"We have just had five days of training, that too in heavy rains back in Goa," rued Coutinho who was backed by the side's German coach Eduard Loewen.

"We had more positives than just the two goals as we had some good chances to score more and this was only our first game. 6-2 was not a reflection of what the guys showed out there," said Loewen who is also a current player with the German team.

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