The UAE club season has reached its conclusion following Friday's President’s Cup final with Al Ain fitting winners.
The Garden City club had already secured the UAE Pro League title by finishing 10 points clear of last season's champions Shabab Al Ahli.
Below, we pick out the main talking points from the latest campaign.
All conquering Al Ain
By the end of the last game of the season, Al Ain looked battered and bruised.
Soufiane Rahimi, their brilliant Moroccan forward who was player of the match in the 4-1 demolition of Al Jazira in the President’s Cup final, had signalled he needed to come off urgently with a leg injury.
Kaku, their World Cup-bound Paraguayan playmaker, had a massive ice pack strapped to his right hamstring.
The scene was wholly misleading given that, for the whole season, their rivals had not even laid a glove on them.
The country’s most successful football club have been dominant before. Rarely quite to this extent, though.
In wrapping up their 15th league title, they became the first side in the professional era to complete a campaign undefeated.
The past month has felt like a victory procession, since the moment they saw off the outgoing double winners, Shabab Al Ahli, in a brilliant game at the Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium.
The “golden season” was capped by the Rahimi-inspired trouncing of Jazira as Al Ain completed a richly deserved double.
Courageous defence
Shabab Al Ahli were always going to have their work cut out trying to match the heights of the previous campaign.
They had been trailblazers back then, winning a domestic double and going deep in Asian competition, too.
The fact they ended their defence of those trophies empty-handed felt harsh. The standards they set under their impressive manager Paulo Sousa hardly dipped, but they were just bettered by Al Ain.
As Sousa intimated when they lost out 3-2 in an epic title decider in April, there was no shame in losing out to a side of Al Ain’s quality.
At that stage, though, there was still reason for optimism. They were heading off to Jeddah to compete in the AFC Champions League Elite Finals, which had a rejigged schedule because of the Iran war.
But then their misery was compounded when they were victims of the most heinous refereeing injustice imaginable.
Don’t mention the VAR
Football in general, and Arabian Gulf football in particular, does a strong line in refereeing conspiracy theories.
Shortly after the start of the campaign, Al Ain were so incensed by what they perceived as biased officiating that they became embroiled in a row with the UAE FA about it.
From that point onwards, referees from overseas were flown in to oversee their matches, and even then Ivic often found fault with them.
When the furore was at its height, Sousa pointed out that UAE referees need help rather than hysteria.
There are clearly capable ones out there. After all, the Emirati Omar Al Ali has been appointed as one of the 52 referees for the World Cup in North America this summer.
But it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Never in the short, ill-starred history of the dreaded video assistant referee system has a team been quite so wronged as Shabab Al Ahli were in April.
With a place in Asian club football’s biggest match on the line, they thought they had forced extra time against Machida Zelvia in the semi-final of the Champions League with a stoppage-time leveller by Guilherme Bala.
There was no way it could be chalked off. Bala had shot from distance, so no likelihood of an offside. It had crashed into the net, so clearly crossed the line. There was no foul play anywhere to be seen.
And yet the officials conspired to find something, eventually happening on a throw in taking place before a substitution had been fully completed. It was utter nonsense.
Al Wahda’s bright start fizzles out
One of the oddest narrative arcs of the season was that of Jose Morais, who was burning it up as manager of Al Wahda at the start of the season.
The laid-back Portuguese coach had lengthy spells as an assistant to Jose Mourinho at Porto, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Chelsea earlier in his career.
He marked himself out as a “Special One” himself with his start in UAE football, as he led Wahda on a winning streak in which they were playing thrilling attacking football.
With former Ajax playmaker Dusan Tadic as their fulcrum, they were wonderful to watch. At least they eventually managed to pick up the ADIB Cup – depriving Al Ain a treble in the process – but their season promised so much more given their start.
Across the 19 matches Morais had with Wahda, his side picked up 2.37 points per game, which is extraordinary. They were flying towards qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League, too.
And then, while on the crest of a wave, he chucked it all in to take over struggling Sharjah instead.
Shadow of Cosmin Olaroiu
In 2025, Sharjah had become just the second UAE side – after two-time Asian champions Al Ain – to win a major continental title.
Their AFC Champions League Two success against Lion City Sailors in Singapore was the exclamation mark on Cosmin Olaroiu’s trophy-laden stint at the club.
By the time they picked up that cup, he had already been announced as the next UAE coach, as the national team made one final push for World Cup qualification.
He was always going to leave big boots to fill at the club he was departing.
As his replacement, Sharjah swooped for Milos Milojevic, who had himself had a sparkling introduction to UAE football two seasons earlier when he took Al Wasl to a domestic double.
It was all too much for Milojevic, who was soon booted out after a woeful start to the campaign. Morais arrived from Wahda, but he could scarcely improve things.
Sharjah finished a lowly eighth and failed to make the knockout phase of the Champions League, which was some way beneath their lofty expectations.
