Ahead of the 2015/16 Arabian Gulf League season, John McAuley offers five reasons for expats to go out and take in some UAE domestic league football.
Temperamental talent:
No matter what people say, renegades and rebels have their place in football. How boring would the beautiful game become if there wasn’t a maverick or a mercurial talent to distort it? Mario Balotelli infuriates, but he intrigues, too; Zlatan Ibrahimovic confuses and captivates.
There is no shortage of “free spirits” in the UAE, either.
Majed Naser, the league's enfant terrible, is joined this season by Jo, a striker who's had his fair share of disciplinary issues; Emmanuel Emenike, so incensed at being booed by Fenerbahce fans last season that he attempted to walk off the pitch; and Jorge Valdivia, who last summer turned up in a Fujairah scarf but never made it onto the pitch.
Those four, at least, should keep supporters entertained.
UAE’s ‘golden generation’:
It’s a predictable moniker, but Mahdi Ali’s boys genuinely deserve it. Hugely successful through various age-group levels, this band of brothers have genuine aspirations of reaching the World Cup in three years’ time.
It will be very welcome, too, given the UAE have qualified only once before, and that was way back in 1990. So there is no better time to cheer on the finest players of your adopted country week-in, week-out, plus a quick calculation suggests supporting two teams in Russia can double your chances of a satisfying tournament.
And imagine your friends’ faces when you rattle off the whole UAE squad without even looking at your Panini sticker album. A bona fide football hipster.
Prodigious playmakers:
Everyone loves a talented No 10. It’s the sort of player aspiring footballers wanted to be growing up – dictating play, determining the ebb and flow of a match, deciding the outcome with a cunning assist or a spectacular solo goal.
Think Diego Maradona, Pele, Michael Laudrup ... Bruno Cheyrou. Playmakers are so special, in fact, that the Italians provide them their very own term: the “Trequartista”. It just sounds classy. And this season the UAE boasts a surfeit of them.
Typically, they hail from South America, with Everton Ribeiro, Jorge Valdivia, Thiago Neves, and Fabio Lima the standouts. Yet UAE star Omar Abdulrahman is very much cast in the same mould. That quintet alone would be worth the admission fee.
Swelling attendances:
One of the ills affecting the game here (aside from the simulation, feigning injury and rapid turnover of players) is the comparatively meagre crowd that come watch.
Attendances are disappointingly low. But why? With the amount of investment recently in genuine player talent, and the prevalence of a football-fanatical expat population, more non-Emiratis should be plumping for a local team to support then turn out to help drive them to success.
Whether Argentine, Spanish, German or English, they could even transport traditions from their respective homelands to enhance the match-day experience. For example, think how much more appealing Al Ahli’s Rashid Stadium would be if it reverberated to “Ahmed Khalil, he’s big, he’s red, his feet stick out the bed”.
Coaching characters:
Go to a live match involving Al Ahli, spend the entire game with eyes fixed firmly on Cosmin Olaroiu and you will not depart disappointed.
The Romanian is undoubtedly the UAE’s best coach – perhaps even the finest in the Middle East – but when he’s not coaxing his players to triumph or titles, he’s usually berating an official or occasionally verbally jousting with the opposite dugout. It’s pure box-office.
So in television’s absence of a “Cosmin Cam”, you’re left with no option but to go see for yourself. Throw the imposing Abel Braga into the mix, add no-nonsense Javier Aguirre and the ever-excitable Caio Junior, and the league this season could be captivatingly combustible. For a country fascinated by fireworks, it promises pyrotechnics aplenty.
jmcauley@thenational.ae
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