Beach soccer World Cup dream alive

Dubai: Marcelo Mendes is determined his team will not merely be going to Rio for a beach holiday come November.

In fact, the Brazilian coach reckons a semifinal spot in the Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup is not out of the question for his UAE team who were crowned champions of Asia over the weekend.

"We don't want to go there, play and lose and come back. I don't like that idea," he said, after the UAE defeated Japan 4-3 to take top honours in the final of the Asian qualifying tournament at Al Mamzar beach on Saturday night.

"My idea is to go there and do our best, go to the quarterfinal and after that anything can happen.

"I don't just want to take my 12 players to Brazil to play and say 'ok that's enough now'. My idea is to go there and win the matches and go as far as we can."

The UAE team had just three weeks to prepare for last week's tournament and Mendes believes more time together will make all the difference to how they perform in November.

"We need to train more. Europe has strong teams like Portugal and France, and Brazil are the best team in the world.

"But my players make me very confident for the World Cup. We need to train well here - maybe for a month to develop the players more.

"We have only trained for three weeks so I have much more to show to them. You can't do it all at once so there is a lot to learn still," said Mendes, explaining that the team had focused predominantly on defence in the build-up to the tournament and will have to work on developing their attack in the coming weeks.

Playing a crucial role in those preparations will be the UAE's inspirational captain, Bakhit Sa'ad, who was named player of the tournament.

"We showed everybody we are the best and we are hoping to do something even more serious at the World Cup," he said after his team's triumph.

The other teams from Asia who will be at the World Cup are Japan (who reached the quarterfinal stage in Rio last year) and Iran, after the latter defeated defending champions Bahrain 6-0 to take the final qualification spot.

Other teams already qualified for the global showpiece which kicks off on November 2 at the Copacabana in Rio are: Brazil, Nigeria, Senegal, Solomon Islands, USA, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay.

The draw will take place in France on August 26, when the UAE will also find out whether its bid to host the 2009 event has been successful.