Will Jorge Pinto’s South American revolution save the UAE’s World Cup chances?

Jorge Luis Pinto takes over squad that has not played competitive football since the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic forced the suspension of the 2019-20 Arabian Gulf League season. (FILE/AFP)
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Updated 23 July 2020
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Will Jorge Pinto’s South American revolution save the UAE’s World Cup chances?

  • Progress will see the UAE reach the two-group final round
  • Pinto is no stranger to international football having managed his native Colombia

DUBAI: For the UAE Football Association, it’s the last throw of the dice as far as reaching the 2022 World Cup is concerned.

On Wednesday, new national team coach Jorge Luis Pinto, laid out a roadmap to the 2022 World Cup as he prepared to take charge of a training session with the Emirati squad for the first time ahead of reschedule Round 2 AFC qualifying matches against  Malaysia at home on Oct. 8; away to Indonesia on Oct. 13; and home matches against Thailand and Vietnam, on Nov. 12 and 17 respectively.

Progress will see the UAE reach the two-group final round. Failure, however, would at best be a major setback for Emirati football, at worst, a disaster.

Pinto is no stranger to international football having managed his native Colombia, Costa Rica and Honduras in the past. Remarkably, he is now the third manager to take charge of the UAE during this qualifying campaign, and as he was presented officially at the UAE FA headquarters in Al Khawaneej, Dubai, he spoke of his passion and enthusiasm for the job at hand.

“The UAE is advanced in so many different fields, and football should match this excellence,” the UAE FA quoted Pinto saying. “Coaching this team is a wonderful challenge, and nobody has more desire to take the Whites to the World Cup than I do.”

Ahead of the first training session in Al Ain, Pinto revealed that he had actually held talks with UAE FA before the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and insisted that he would get to grips with the culture of the team quickly.

“I have watched and analyzed a lot of matches involving Arab and Asian teams,” he said. “Football is an international language and not that complicated, and I am sure that we will take the UAE national team forward.”

But for the UAE, it’s a case of all change, not just in terms of the coach, but also in the identity of the squad. Pinto will be taking charge of a squad that has a distinctly South American flavor for the first time. 

Members of Mahdi Ali’s golden generation may remain in the shape of Omar Abdulrahman, Ali Khaseif, Walid Abbas, Ismail Ahamd, Ahmad Khalil and record top scorer Ali Mabkhout, among other newer, younger players. But this is the first UAE squad to include the newly nationalised trio of Argentine Sebastian Tagliabue, and the Brazilian duo Caio Canedo and Fabio Lima.

No doubt the three have excelled in the Arabian Gulf League over the last few years, marking themselves as arguably the most successful imports to ever play in the UAE’s top division.

The UAE for long had resisted the temptation to go down the route of nationalizing foreign players but the poor qualifying World Cup qualifying campaign so far has forced their hand. 

These players may not be a long-term solution.

Tagliabué would be 37 at the time of the next World Cup in Qatar. While Lima and Canedo will be 29 and 32 respectively. But a solution nonetheless was desperately needed to halt an alarming slump in form.

It’s a move that the UAE FA deems necessary after the team’s progress plateaued dramatically after the highpoint of the 2012 London Olympics, the Gulf Cup triumph in 2013 and the third-place finish at the 2015 AFC Asian Cup in Australia.

After the stability and progress that Mahdi Ali had brought between 2012 and 2017, the last three years have seen a period of chopping and changing that have hindered the team’s development.

Former Argentina coach Edgardo Bauza replaced the Emirati coach but only lasted four months before being offered to the Saudi national team, at the time preparing for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, although he would leave that post too ahead of the tournament. 

Alberto Zaccheroni was next in line and managed to drag the UAE to the final of the 2017 Gulf Cup in Kuwait despite some inconsistent performances. However, in that fateful final on Jan. 5, 2018, Omar Abdulrahman missed a last-minute penalty that would have secured the title, and then another one in a shootout defeat. Zaccheroni survived until the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, held in the UAE, but a semi-final defeat to Qatar meant his time was up.

Hopes were high when Dutchman and former Saudi Arabia national team coach Bert van Marwijk replaced him, but a poor showing by the UAE at the Gulf Cup in Qatar last year saw them fail to progress from group stages, never mind have another assault on the title.

Van Marwick, who had led his country to the 2010 World Cup final, where they lost 1-0 to Spain, would eventually leave after two poor results left the UAE’s hopes of qualifying to the 2022 edition in genuine peril.

After wins against Malaysia and Indonesia had given the UAE a perfect start of six points, dismal defeats - 2-1 defeat in Thailand and 1-0 in Vietnam - saw van Marwijk the latest to walk.

The UAE now sit fourth in the group (five points behind leaders Vietnam), with one game in hand over the teams above them. While hope remained, another quick fix was needed. On Dec. 22, 2019, Serbian coach Ivan Jovanovic became the latest man tasked with rescuing the UAE national team’s plight, but the onset of the coronavirus crisis meant that when his contract was terminated in April he had not overseen a single competitive match for the Whites.

Pinto takes over squad that has not played competitive football since the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic forced the suspension of the 2019-20 Arabian Gulf League season. A lot of work lies ahead of the resumption of domestic and international football if he is not to suffer the fate of his predecessors.

He says he is ready to make his mark.

“I already have many observations about the UAE national team, and the most important thing is how the team will perform collectively,” Pinto said. “I want to leave my fingerprint on this team, and I will thrive to advance its tactical side.”

The clock is ticking.


Paul Waring shoots 61 in Abu Dhabi to set 36-hole record on European tour with 19-under par

Updated 08 November 2024
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Paul Waring shoots 61 in Abu Dhabi to set 36-hole record on European tour with 19-under par

ABU DHABI: Paul Waring hit the shot of his life to complete a career-low 11-under 61 in the second round of the Abu Dhabi Championship on Friday and establish a five-stroke lead heading into the weekend of the European tour’s first playoff event.
The No. 229-ranked Englishman hit a draw with a 3-wood from about 260 yards to inside 4 feet at No. 18 and tapped in the birdie putt to move to 19-under par for the tournament.
The European tour confirmed to The Associated Press that it is the lowest 36-hole score to par in the tour’s history.
Waring, who opened with a 64 on Thursday, made nine birdies and an eagle in a bogey-free round at Yas Links and set a course record.
“I’ve got a nice lead at the moment but even before I tee off tomorrow, someone might have caught me,” said the 39-year-old Waring, whose sole win came at the Nordea Masters in 2018. “While I’m in the lead at the moment, and if we are rational about this, everyone is still going to fire a lot of
birdies in there.

Paul Waring. (AFP/File)


“So if I’m going to be involved on Sunday afternoon, I’ve still got to keep going the way I am and I know that.”
First-round leader Tommy Fleetwood of England (68), Johannes Veerman of the United States (67) and Danish players Niklas Norgaard (65) and Thorbjorn Olesen (67) were tied for second place on 14 under.
Rory McIlroy hit his tee shot into a greenside bunker at the par-3 17th and made a triple bogey on the way to a second successive 67, leaving him nine strokes off the lead.
McIlroy, who can clinch a sixth Race to Dubai title with a win this week, was 7 under after 13 holes of his second round and feels he’ll need to produce something similar to reel in Waring and his closest chasers.
“I need the golf course to firm up a little bit and toughen up a little bit to have a chance,” McIlroy said. “There’s so many gettable holes out there.”


Zheng advances to WTA Finals championship match with semifinal win over Krejcikova

Updated 08 November 2024
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Zheng advances to WTA Finals championship match with semifinal win over Krejcikova

  • Zheng, 22, awaits top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka or third-seeded Coco Gauff in the final on Saturday

RIYADH: Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen became the first tournament debutante to reach the championship match at the WTA Finals since 2021 with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Barbora Krejcikova in Riyadh on Friday.

The seventh-seeded Zheng needed one hour and 40 minutes to overcome the Wimbledon champion in their semifinal encounter, firing nine aces along the way.
Zheng led 6-3, 3-0 before the eighth-seeded Krejcikova launched a comeback attempt but the Chinese star regained control of the match to make it two wins from two clashes with the Czech.
Zheng, 22, awaits top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka or third-seeded Coco Gauff in the final on Saturday, as she bids to become the first player to win the WTA Finals on her maiden appearance since Ashleigh Barty in 2019.
“It feels so special because this is my first WTA Finals and right now I’m in the final, which is unbelievable. She’s a really good player, today we gave a good match,” said Zheng.
“It was tricky because at 3-0 I think I dropped my performance; suddenly my performance went down, and she played more free and I was suddenly 3-4 down. I gave so much control to myself to not panic too much. It shows I was mentally strong in that moment.”
Zheng was near untouchable on serve in the 40-minute opening set, dropping just one point behind her first delivery en route to a 6-3 lead.
The Olympic champion broke twice for a 3-0 advantage in the second set and looked on her way to a comfortable victory.
But Krejcikova had other ideas and she halted Zheng’s momentum by attacking her second serve to grab the next four games and inch ahead for the first time in the contest.
It became a tug of war but it was Zheng who found an opening, breaking in game 12 to put herself in the position to serve for the match.
The fight wasn’t over yet as Zheng had to save a break point and saw a first match point slip away before she wrapped up the win on her second chance when a Krejcikova forehand sailed wide.
Since the event’s inauguration in 1972, Zheng is only the second Asian player to reach the decider at the WTA Finals after Li Na pulled off that feat in 2013.


PSG to curb political slogans in wake of ‘Free Palestine’ banner

Updated 08 November 2024
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PSG to curb political slogans in wake of ‘Free Palestine’ banner

  • PSG promised to “guarantee the absence of political messages” in the stands
  • “The club was not aware of the plan to display such a message“

PARIS: Paris Saint-Germain say they will make sure there is no repeat of a midweek unfurling by fans of a banner proclaiming “Free Palestine.”
The huge banner covered an entire section of the stadium at the Parc des Princes Wednesday night ahead of PSG’s defeat at the hands of Atletico Madrid.
As well as the slogan “Free Palestine,” the banner showed a bloodstained Palestinian flag, a gesticulating man with a keffiyeh scarf covering all his face except his eyes, the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and a young boy wrapped in the Lebanese flag.
On Friday, after a meeting with the French football federation and government officials, PSG promised to “guarantee the absence of political messages” in the stands.
“A frank and constructive dialogue made it possible to identify solutions that PSG is committed to putting in place from the next match at the Parc des Princes,” a government spokesperson told AFP.
The banner, which was unfurled by the Paris Ultras Collective (CUP) hard-core fan group, was shown above another slogan which read: “War on the pitch but peace in the world.”
“The club was not aware of the plan to display such a message,” PSG said in a statement Wednesday evening.


Al-Hilal win again to pile pressure on Gerrard at Al-Ettifaq

Updated 08 November 2024
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Al-Hilal win again to pile pressure on Gerrard at Al-Ettifaq

  • Three fine goals from Aleksandar Mitrovic, Malcom and Mohammed Al-Qahtani did the damage

RIYADH: Al-Hilal returned to the top of the Saudi Pro League on Friday, defeating Ettifaq 3-1 to rack up the pressure on under-fire coach Steven Gerrard.

Three fine goals from Aleksandar Mitrovic, Malcom and Mohammed Al-Qahtani did the damage as the champions moved a point clear of Al-Ittihad, who won 2–0 at Al-Orubah on Thursday. 

The loss means that Ettifaq, who started the season with three straight wins, have taken just one point from the last six games in the league. It may mean a nervous international break for Gerrard, though the Liverpool legend will know that this was a battling performance from his players, who just did not quite have the quality when needed.

While Ettifaq tried to keep it tight at the back, it was not all one-way traffic. Moussa Dembele had a couple of opportunities when the ball simply wouldn’t fall for him and Karl Toko-Ekambi shot just over from the left side, though it could have been a mishit cross.

All know, however, that you have to be ruthless and clinical when playing the 19-time Saudi champions as wastefulness is almost always punished. It took the Blues some time to get going but they started to look ominous as half-time approached.

Just before the break, Al-Hilal should have taken the lead. This season Mitrovic has been lethal inside the area and the league’s leading scorer was picked out in space near the penalty spot; the stadium held its breath but former Fulham teammate Marek Rodak got his foot to the low shot and Malcom fired the rebound wide.

Mitrovic didn’t miss in added time. Renan Lodi picked up possession on the left and the Brazilian then bent a beautiful low cross behind the Ettifaq defense and Mitrovic could not miss from inside the six-yard box for his 11th of the season.

Ettifaq were still very much in the game and ten minutes after the restart, Toko-Ekambi stretched for a low cross, and while the Cameroonian did make contact and forced a good save from Yassine Bounou, it was a great chance.

The easterners thought they were going to regret that as Mitrovic had the ball in the net once more but his close-range header was ruled out for offside. There was a lengthy VAR review but it only confirmed the referee’s original decision.

The second goal did come eventually, and when it did — in the 81st minute — it was one to remember, for the home fans at least. Malcolm was running in from the left side of the area when he was found by a smart backheel from Abdullah Al-Hamdan. The Brazilian then took the ball past the goalkeeper with his first touch and then rolled the ball home.

It seemed that there was no coming back from that — Hilal are not a team that gives up two-goal leads — but as injury time started, Ettifaq were handed a lifeline in the shape of a penalty, and up stepped Vitinho to place the ball into the bottom corner.

Unfortunately for the visitors, it served just to wake up the hosts, who quickly restored their two-goal lead, though Gerrard angrily told officials that Mitrovic had committed a foul in the build-up. The home fans enjoyed the goal, however, as Malcom fed Mohammed Al-Qahtani who turned 360 degrees to make a little space in the area and then fired a low shot home.

It got even worse for Ettifaq as Abdullah Radif was sent off for shoving Ali Al-Bulaihi in the neck. There really was no coming back from that.

All in all, it was a perfect evening’s work for Al-Hilal, even if Saudi Arabia coach Herve Renard will be a little concerned that star man Salem Al-Dawsari seemed to pick up an injury — with the trip to Australia for a vital World Cup qualifier next Thursday.

Elsewhere, Al-Ahli bounced back from their defeat in the Jeddah Derby to defeat Al-Raed 2-0.


Paul Waring shoots 61 in Abu Dhabi to set 36-hole record on European tour with 19-under par

Updated 08 November 2024
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Paul Waring shoots 61 in Abu Dhabi to set 36-hole record on European tour with 19-under par

  • Waring, who opened with a 64 on Thursday, made nine birdies and an eagle in a bogey-free round at Yas Links
  • Rory McIlroy made a triple bogey on No. 17 in his second successive 67

ABU DHABI: Paul Waring hit the shot of his life to complete a career-low 11-under 61 in the second round of the Abu Dhabi Championship on Friday and establish a five-stroke lead heading into the weekend of the European tour’s first playoff event.
The No. 229-ranked Englishman hit a draw with a 3-wood from about 260 yards to inside 4 feet at No. 18 and tapped in the birdie putt to move to 19-under par for the tournament.
The European tour confirmed to The Associated Press that it is the lowest 36-hole score to par in the tour’s history.
Waring, who opened with a 64 on Thursday, made nine birdies and an eagle in a bogey-free round at Yas Links and set a course record.
First-round leader Tommy Fleetwood of England (68), Johannes Veerman of the United States (67) and Danish players Niklas Norgaard (65) and Thorbjorn Olesen (67) were tied for second place on 14 under.
Rory McIlroy made a triple bogey on No. 17 in his second successive 67 and was nine strokes off the lead.
McIlroy can clinch a sixth Race to Dubai title with a win this week.