Dubai: UAE midfielder Omar Abdul Rahman is expected to be unveiled by Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal in Riyadh on Monday after agreeing to a season-long loan from Al Ain.
Neither club has officially announced the move but Al Hilal has tweeted their plans to hold a free event at the King Fahad Stadium on Monday night to welcome new players.
Coach Jorge Jesus is thought to be unveiling 26-year-old Abdul Rahman along with fellow new signings Spanish defender Alberto Botia from Greece’s Olympiacos, and Peruvian winger Andre Carillo from Portugal’s Benfica.
Abdul Rahman, the 2016 Asian Player of the Year, is understood to have agreed to a recent Al Ain contract extension on the condition that he can spend a season on loan at Al Hilal.
The move will be a homecoming of sorts with the Riyadh-born player having started his career with Al Hilal as a youth team player back in 2000, before joining Al Ain in 2006.
He has won four Arabian Gulf League (AGL) titles with Al Ain, and is a four-time AGL Emirati Player of the Year.
Bursting onto the scene as part of Mahdi Ali’s UAE team that reached the 2012 Olympics in London, where his performances earned him a trial at Manchester City, he never went on to complete a much speculated move to Europe, despite being a key part of the UAE’s 2013 Gulf Cup win and 2015 Asian Cup third place finish.
Recent performances for Al Ain have plateaued and he was largely blamed for the UAE’s Gulf Cup final defeat to Oman in January after missing two penalties, one to potentially win the contest late on in extra time, before another decisive kick in the shoot-out.
It was claimed that he and Al Jazira striker Ali Mabkhout broke a curfew to go out the night before the final in Kuwait, but he recently vowed to clear his name and sue the people who claimed this, as he said he had only gone to the hairdressers.
He has been absent from Al Ain’s recent pre-season camp in Croatia and didn’t feature in the club’s two-legged Arab Club Champions Cup first round opener, which they lost 2-2 on away goals to Algeria’s ES Setif on Saturday, despite both legs having taken place in Zagreb.
