Dubai: The UAE football coach Jorge Luis Pinto has called up all three naturalised professionals into his squad of 27 for an internal camp prior to their two friendly matches against Tajikistan and Bahrain later this month.
Al Ain’s Caio Canedo Correa will join Al Wasl’s Fabio de Lima and Al Nasr’s experienced striker Sebastian Tagliabue for the eight-day training camp. All three players, who have spent considerable amount of time living in the UAE, were granted citizenship making them eligible to play for the national side.
Pinto has requested his squad of 27 players to report at Al Nasr Club on November 8 evening for the training camp that has been scheduled to be held from November 9-16.
The two friendly games are part of the UAE’s preparations for the joint qualifiers for the 2022 Fifa World Cup and the 2023 AFC Asian Cup that have been postponed until next year by the world governing body due to the prevailing pandemic conditions.
Keeping in line with Fifa’s next international window, the UAE national team will meet for the camp from Sunday evening with training sessions scheduled from the following day at the Humaid Al Tayer Stadium at Al Nasr Club.
The UAE’s first friendly will be against Tajikistan on November 12, while the match against neighbouring Bahrain will be played on November 16, after which the squad will return back to their respective clubs.
The technical staff led by Pinto was keen to attend and follow the matches of the ongoing Arabian Gulf League (AGL) to monitor the performance of the players and assess their condition and their physical and technical readiness prior to these two preparatory matches.
The UAE squad last met in the first half of October at the same venue, prior to a friendly match against Uzbekistan that ended in a 2-1 loss for the home side in Pinto’s first match at the helm. Tagliabue scored the only goal on debut, while Uzbekistan got their two goals from Shokhruz Norkhonov.
The UAE’s next major assignment in the FIFA and AFC qualifiers will be their home game against Malaysia followed by encounters against Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Squad
Khalid Essa, Ali Khasief, Adel Al Hosani, Mahmoud Khamis, Youssef Jaber, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Salem Rashid, Shaheen Abdul Rahman, Faris Jumaa, Mohammad Shaker, Mohammad Barghash, Abdul Aziz Haikal, Ahmad Barman, Khamis Esmail, Khalid Bawazeer, Majid Sorour, Abdullah Ramadan, Mohammad Al Attas, Fabio de Lima, Bandar Al Ahbabi, Khalfan Mubarak, Habib Al Fardan, Khalil Ebrahim, Ali Mabkhout, Ali Saleh, Caio Canedo, Sebastian Tagliabue
