Since the exhausting qualifying process for the 2026 World Cup began for Asian teams just under two years ago, the winds of change have whistled through UAE football.
Now they are potentially two games away from a first trip back to football’s biggest show since 1990. The face of the national team has altered massively since 2023, let alone that of the side that went to Italia ’90.
Thirty-five years ago, the heroes were the likes of Adnan Al Talyani and Hassan Mohammed. Emirati players like Khalid Essa and Abdullah Ramadan are still the backbone of the national team, but added to that now are new names with an international ring to them, like Fabio De Lima, Kouame Autonne and Mackenzie Hunt.
The UAE face a qualifying play-off in Doha this month against Oman and Qatar. Win that, and they will go to the World Cup, to be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico next summer.
Of the XI that lined up for the most recent match, a friendly against Bahrain in September, seven were born overseas. It represents a significant change to times past.
On a very tenuous technicality, none of the 1990 vintage were born in the UAE. But only because each player’s birth date predated the foundation of the country on December 2, 1971.
The Emirati community remains a mine of rich footballing talent. Allied to that now are players who have arrived in the country as adults to play professionally in the UAE Pro League.
They have then remained long enough to qualify to represent the national team via Fifa’s five-year residency criteria.
Many have lived here far longer. De Lima, for example, has called Dubai home since 2014 – so 40 per cent of his life – after arriving at Al Wasl from Brazil’s second division. He debuted for the national team in 2019, and many overseas-born pros have followed his lead into UAE colours.
Hunt represents a third section of the community – and a potentially transformative one. He is from a so far largely untapped pool of prospective players: expatriate kids who have grown up in the international school system of the UAE.
In August, it was announced that Dubai’s population had passed the four-million mark. Back in 1990, it was around 500,000, while it has doubled in just the past 15 years. That equates to hundreds of thousands of children attending international schools, many of them football mad.
Of course, many of their heroes will be international ones – perhaps the stars of their countries of origin, or Lionel Messi or Kylian Mbappe. Now, though, they also have role models who have trodden the same school playing fields as them.
Hunt was born in the UK, but spent his formative years growing up in Dubai. He attended DESS Oud Metha – an international school which, like those stars of 1990, predates the formation of the UAE.
He went on to DESS College, and, outside school, attended Go Pro Academy, before heading back to the UK to join the ranks of Premier League side Everton.
When the UAE approached him about the possibility of playing for them, he jumped at it. He regards Dubai as home, and this summer transferred from Fleetwood Town, in the fourth tier of the UK professional game, to Abu Dhabi club Baniyas.
“There are so many boys and girls trying to copy his journey now,” Lee Cuddihy, a PE teacher at DESS, said.
Mr Cuddihy’s own daughter, Lily, represents UAE in age-group football. She attended the same primary school as Hunt, and is now at his old secondary school, as well as the same academy, Go Pro.
As an added parallel, she has even had interest from her hometown club in the UK – in her case, Sunderland, rather than Everton for Hunt – and trialled with them in the summer.
“We have discussed what a similar journey it is for Lily,” he said. “He left the year before we arrived, so I physically never coached him, but it was funny because I used to find Mackenzie’s DESS tops in the room with ‘Hunt’ written on the back.”
Lily trains twice per week with the UAE at the FA headquarters in Khawaneej, and twice with Go Pro. She was spotted by the UAE while playing for her school team at an Expo tournament while in Year 5 at DESS.
“One of my first questions was, ‘She is British, so is it worth doing this?’” Mr Cuddihy said.
“They asked when we came here. It was when Lily was two, and they told us that as long as she had been here for five years, she was eligible to play for them.
“If expat kids are available [for the national teams] in the future, then they could really kick on. We just have to find them, let it grow, and then it can benefit everyone.”
Lily feels a dual allegiance – England, where she was born, and the UAE, where she is growing up – meaning she is not short on role models.
“I feel very proud when I play for the UAE, and inspired by the older players like Mackenzie,” Lily said. “Men can help inspire women’s sport and I think it can work both ways.”
While she plays a variety of sports, her dad says she drops everything for football. In the summer, the family took a diversion from their holiday in Italy after getting tickets for the Women’s Euros final between England and Spain in Switzerland.
It was during the six-hour drive in a hire car from Milan to Basel that they had the offer of her trial for Sunderland.
“I also dream of being a Lioness,” Lily, 13, said. “It was the best summer ever, and to see the final before my trial was so inspiring. I didn’t believe [dad] when he said he’d got tickets.
“The atmosphere – a sold-out crowd and a full stadium – was amazing. One half was Spain, and one half was England.”
Lily's dad had been a ballboy at Roker Park when he was around her age. His daughter's trial for his hometown club came about via a recommendation of a coach at an academy in Dubai.
The trial was at the Academy of Light, where first-team players like Wilson Isidor and Granit Xhaka were training, and she played in a 2-0 win against a touring Rangers side.
“I was very excited,” Lily said. “I loved wearing the red and white of Sunderland. In terms of the standard, they played a lot faster and were more aggressive than what I’m used to over here, but I felt like I fitted in.
“I felt like I was pretty decent because the coaches said I had done well and that I should come back next year.”
By which point, the national team might be playing in the World Cup, with a multicultural side which will only serve to grow the UAE FA’s “Dream of a Nation” tagline.
“It is important because we can increase the [pool] of selection for this country,” Cosmin Olaroiu, the manager of the UAE men’s team, said.
“For me the idea of local players and international players doesn’t exist. All that exists is players for the national team of the Emirates.
“It is the country that gave us the possibility to live here, the possibility to have a different life. It is a country that adopted us.
“For most of the players, they now have this possibility that they didn’t have in their countries. We have to respect this, and they have to respect this by paying back the things that this country has given to us.”
