Cosmin Olaroiu has told his players to channel the pain of defeat to Qatar – as well as a little of the spirit of Omar Abdulrahman – to help keep alive their World Cup dream.
The national team face Iraq at a sold out Mohamed Bin Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi on Thursday night.
It is the first match of a two-leg play-off which will whittle down the final two Asian sides targeting an appearance at next summer’s finals to just one.
The winner on aggregate after the second match, in Basra on Tuesday, will progress to a final qualification play-off in Mexico in March.
The complicated path to the World Cup is a vexing one for both sides. Each were 90 minutes away from direct qualification last month, ahead of fixtures which they felt were loaded in the favour of their opposition.
Iraq could only draw in Jeddah to a Saudi Arabia side who had had three more days rest than they had in the Asian qualifier play-off, when a win was needed.
It was the same situation which the UAE found themselves in, where they finally lost out to Qatar after a tumultuous fixture in Doha.
Olaroiu, the UAE coach, said he felt as low as at any point in his career after that loss, but pointed out his players can learn much from what happened.
“It’s not easy to pass this moment after the Qatar game,” Olaroiu said. “Actually, for me, it was terrible, but I have more experience than the players in this life.
“I have dealt with these kinds of moments, and I was telling them that the best teacher that we have in this life is pain.
“The pain that we felt after that game, that should teach us not feel this again. That's why we have to do the best and the maximum that we can to not to feel the pain again.”
In the days leading up to the first leg of the play-off, Omar Abdulrahman announced his retirement. The former UAE playmaker had suffered an injury-plagued end to a career that had reached glorious heights.
His announcement was a decent excuse for the UAE social media team to revisit one of Abdulrahman’s finest moments.
It was his sensational solo goal which helped deliver the UAE the 2013 Gulf Cup, in the final against Iraq.
Both sides have moved on in the 12 years since, and Olaroiu suggested the current version of the UAE are more dependent on teamwork than the sort of magic moments Abdulrahman was able to provide.
“I had the privilege to work with Omar,” Olaroiu said. “I’m very close with him and he’s a fantastic, phenomenal player.
“I think his level was much more than shown here. He's one player that should [have played] in Europe. He had that potential.
“We use everything to motivate our players. We're talking about the pressure. Pressure is when you have something very important to defend.
“If you don't have this, you don't care, and you don't have pressure. But when you have pressure, this means you feel that you have something important to defend. And this is what we have to feel to pass this [play-off] round. We have to deal with this.
“Sometimes you have players and you have to use the player abilities to play in their own way and sometimes you have players they can play together and to collect their abilities and put together to create a strong team to perform.
“That team had a lot of good players, good individual players and they used to play like this. Now we have to focus to play together, to play like a team.”
Olaroiu’s counterpart studiously avoided trying to talk about pressure. Graham Arnold, the Iraq manager, understands well what is at stake.
He was the Australia manager when they knocked out the UAE at a similar stage four years ago, on their way to the 2022 finals in Qatar.
He is with a different country now, while the UAE side has an entirely different appearance to that of four years ago, too.
But the 62-year-old Australian says he has spent all of the time since Iraq’s loss in Jeddah studying the UAE side.
For the second camp in a row, he has banned his players from social media. “It’s simple: if they are on it, they don’t play,” he said.
And he is doing his best to relieve the pressure on his players in the do or die play-off.
“The word that starts with 'P', we just remove it,” Arnold said. “It’s like the weather, it changes every day.
“I’ve been nothing but proud of the boys since I’ve been in the job [Arnold was appointed coach in May]. Their work ethic has been fantastic. But we can do better with the ball.”
