DUBAI // For vast swathes of this match, you felt like the guest who had plumped for the wrong party.
While Al Jazira and Al Ain contributed to a celebration of the beautiful game down the road in Abu Dhabi – the aptly named "Al Classico" – Al Shabab and Al Wahda plodded through a turgid encounter at the Rashid bin Maktoum Stadium.
It was not supposed to be this way. The fixture pitted the top two clubs in the embryonic Arabian Gulf League season, scorers of 18 goals between them across seven matches combined.
Yet the predicted football feast was more akin to a famine. Thank heavens, then, for Adel Al Hosani’s blunder just after the hour, when the Wahda goalkeeper spilt Carlos Villanueva’s timid shot into his own goal.
Inadvertently, it sparked Wahda into life, and from there the league leaders managed to turn around the game. Through goals from Salem Saleh and Adil Hermach, five minutes apart, as the match entered its closing stretch, the visitors gleaned what could eventually prove an important three points.
It marked the fourth time in five matches this season that Wahda have taken points from losing positions, something that understandably pleased Jose Peseiro, their coach.
“Until now, the team have done well,” he said. “Everyone has showed good spirit, a good atmosphere and good power. But to play with the feet is not enough, to have a good performance the head is needed also.
“And because of that, with this spirit, we can change the results. The team believes a lot in this moment – I’d like to keep that.”
For his opposite number, Caio Junior, the defeat was not especially tough to take. As he acknowledged, Wahda are front-runners for a reason.
“Al Wahda are a very, very good team, the best we’ve faced,” he said.
“But this was a combative game, competitive and tactical. In my opinion, the draw was a fair result, but in a match like this the small details decide the outcome.”
jmcauley@thenational.ae
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