The pressure of a World Cup play-off can turn the calmest of coaches snappy. Graham Arnold, charged with taking the tough decisions for Australia on Tuesday against UAE, recalls the moment when, as deputy to Guus Hiddink the last time the Socceroos took the indirect route to football’s greatest showpiece, he was told to mind his image.
It was during a nail-biting second leg in which the Australians were battling with Uruguay for a spot at the 2006 World Cup. The Socceroos had lost 1-0 in Montevideo; Australia clawed back an equaliser in Sydney. All of a sudden, tension mounting, Hiddink caught sight of live, big-screen pictures of the home team’s bench.
They showed the worldly Dutch manager on his feet, pensive but unruffled. Seated behind him was Arnold, chewing furiously, eyes cast skywards. Hiddink turned to Arnold and gave him a simple instruction: “Spit out the chewing gum, Arnie!”
Arnold tells the story with a smile, because that evening, settled on penalties, ended well. Hiddink’s point was that those in charge of a nerve-shredding contest should exude a cool confidence. The gum-chewing gave away Arnold’s intense anxiety - not a good look to transmit to players who, at that stage, had inherited 32 years of Australian near-misses when it came to reaching World Cups.
Arnold, 58, may want to reach for the chewing gum in Doha this evening. No Australian has known more intimately the saga that is the country’s agonising relationship with World Cup play-offs. He made his Socceroos debut, as a combative centre-forward, the month before his country fell short in the play-offs for the 1986 tournament, defeated by Scotland.
He was still being entrusted with finding the missing killer instinct in the opposition penalty area when Australia, then affiliated to Fifa’s Oceania Confederation rather than Asia’s, lost to Diego Maradona’s Argentina in a two-legged play-off for the 1994 finals. Arnold came off the bench four years later when the Socceroos, leading 3-1 on aggregate in the second, home leg against Iran, conceded twice in the last 15 minutes to be denied a place at France 1998 on away goals.
Quite the catalogue of bitter experience, then. And that’s before you take in Arnold’s long service as an assistant coach: He was on the staff when the Socceroos lost an ill-tempered World Cup play-off to Uruguay in 2001.
His opposite number, Rodolfo Arruabarrena, is, by contrast, a novice to international management. But the UAE’s head coach, appointed less than four months ago, has more than earned his stripes in tight knockout scenarios. As a teenager, he watched that Argentina-Australia play-off in 1993 with keen interest: he was to win his first cap for Argentina, as a dynamic left-back, within a year of it; Maradona would soon be his team-mate at Boca Juniors.
The winner of Tuesday's one-legged joust earns the right to play Peru for the last spot at Qatar 2022, a prospect that haunts Australians of Arnold’s generation because so many World Cup journeys reached their penultimate step against savvy, ruthless South Americans.
Arruabarrena can trump any archived Australian tales of Uruguayan aggression or Argentinian guile with stories of his own. Twice as a coach, he guided Boca into continental knockouts featuring the biggest club rivalry in South America - the Buenos Aires enmity with River Plate. Those ties would leave scars.
There was the 2014 semi-final of the Copa Sudamericana, when River scored the only goal across 210 minutes of attrition - 19 yellow cards were shown - and Arruabarrena would learn the hard way that chances in these circumstances are to be seized, Boca having missed a penalty after four minutes of the first leg.
The following season he was on the touchline for one of the most notorious of all Copa Libertadores clashes, his Boca thrown out of the tournament after incidents at half-time in the second leg in which fans aimed pepper spray at some River players as they came through the tunnel.
Arruabarrena, who guided Shabab Al-Ahli to the UAE League Cup in 2019, has weathered nervy, late-stage knockouts in four different continents. As a player, he was within touching distance of a European Champions League final with Villarreal, his compatriot Juan Roman Riquelme’s fluffed penalty the reason the Spanish underdogs did not take their 2006 semi-final against Arsenal into extra-time.
His spell as head coach of Egypt’s Pyramids came to an end last June after a suspenseful semi-final in the CAF Confederation Cup, edged, after two goalless legs, by Raja Casablanca deep into sudden-death of a penalty shoot-out. A year on, he is entitled to feel he is due any sliver of luck, any fine margin, that would put him on the right side of this winner-takes-all confrontation.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
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Info
What: 11th edition of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship
When: December 27-29, 2018
Confirmed: men: Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Kevin Anderson, Dominic Thiem, Hyeon Chung, Karen Khachanov; women: Venus Williams
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ae, Virgin megastores or call 800 86 823
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
SRI LANKA SQUAD
Upul Tharanga (captain), Dinesh Chandimal, Niroshan Dickwella
Lahiru Thirimanne, Kusal Mendis, Milinda Siriwardana
Chamara Kapugedara, Thisara Perera, Seekuge Prasanna
Nuwan Pradeep, Suranga Lakmal, Dushmantha Chameera
Vishwa Fernando, Akila Dananjaya, Jeffrey Vandersay
Results
2.30pm Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 1,200m
Winner Lamia, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel.
3pm Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 1,000m
Winner Jap Al Afreet, Elione Chaves, Irfan Ellahi.
3.30pm Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 1,700m
Winner MH Tawag, Bernardo Pinheiro, Elise Jeanne.
4pm Handicap (TB) Dh40,000 2,000m
Winner Skygazer, Sandro Paiva, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
4.30pm The Ruler of Sharjah Cup Prestige (PA) Dh250,000 1,700m
Winner AF Kal Noor, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel.
5pm Sharjah Marathon (PA) Dh70,000 2,700m
Winner RB Grynade, Bernardo Pinheiro, Eric Lemartinel.
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Various Artists
Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World (Habibi Funk)
Essentials
The flights
Emirates, Etihad and Malaysia Airlines all fly direct from the UAE to Kuala Lumpur and on to Penang from about Dh2,300 return, including taxes.
Where to stay
In Kuala Lumpur, Element is a recently opened, futuristic hotel high up in a Norman Foster-designed skyscraper. Rooms cost from Dh400 per night, including taxes. Hotel Stripes, also in KL, is a great value design hotel, with an infinity rooftop pool. Rooms cost from Dh310, including taxes.
In Penang, Ren i Tang is a boutique b&b in what was once an ancient Chinese Medicine Hall in the centre of Little India. Rooms cost from Dh220, including taxes.
23 Love Lane in Penang is a luxury boutique heritage hotel in a converted mansion, with private tropical gardens. Rooms cost from Dh400, including taxes.
In Langkawi, Temple Tree is a unique architectural villa hotel consisting of antique houses from all across Malaysia. Rooms cost from Dh350, including taxes.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Rating: 4/5
How much do leading UAE’s UK curriculum schools charge for Year 6?
- Nord Anglia International School (Dubai) – Dh85,032
- Kings School Al Barsha (Dubai) – Dh71,905
- Brighton College Abu Dhabi - Dh68,560
- Jumeirah English Speaking School (Dubai) – Dh59,728
- Gems Wellington International School – Dubai Branch – Dh58,488
- The British School Al Khubairat (Abu Dhabi) - Dh54,170
- Dubai English Speaking School – Dh51,269
*Annual tuition fees covering the 2024/2025 academic year
Company profile
Name: GiftBag.ae
Based: Dubai
Founded: 2011
Number of employees: 4
Sector: E-commerce
Funding: Self-funded to date
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How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
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Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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The National in Davos
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