The UAE had their hopes of a third Arabian Gulf Cup title extinguished as they were soundly beaten by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah.
Early goals from Hammam Al Hammami, the outstanding young winger, and Feras Albrikan in the final were enough to give the hosts the trophy. It was a first defeat for Zlatko Dalic as coach of the UAE.
For a tournament that is nominally about local bragging rights, the Gulf Cup final almost always creates a major frenzy.
The King Abdullah Sport City Stadium was rocking way ahead of kickoff. The 12,000 or so travelling UAE fans were in their seats hours before the start.
When the players arrived and took their acclimatisation walk around the pitch, they looked spellbound by the away support. Most whipped out their phones to video the scene for posterity.
By the time of kick-off, all the stands were teeming, packed to their 60,000 capacity, and the home faithful were by then drowning out their counterparts.
It was hostile stuff. Khalid Essa, the UAE captain, was visibly agitated by the cacophony of jeers overpowering the national anthem.
Despite that, it was the national team who settled fastest. In the third minute, they carved out the first opening of the game when Guilherme Bala found Nicolas Gimenez in the box.
Gimenez, the Al Wasl playmaker, has been in fine form in front of goal in this competition. But his improvised overhead-kick flew over the bar.
It scarcely quietened the crowd. Within moments, the game was stopped as the field was engulfed with smoke from the fans’ pyrotechnics.
Once they had restarted, it was the hosts who asserted authority, and they struck with a quick-fire double-strike.
First, Al Hammami’s deflected shot found its way past a despairing Essa, after the UAE had failed to clear a corner.
Almost immediately after, they doubled their lead through Albrikan, the striker who had struck in the same net earlier this year to make Al Ahli Saudi champions of Asia at club level.
The UAE were shellshocked. They were clinging on, and lucky the game wasn’t completely gone moments later when Saleh Abu Alshamat hit the post when he really should have made it 3-0 for Saudi Arabia.
In a wild start to the game, the UAE struck the post themselves when they, too, should have scored.
This time Gimenez smashed his shot against the left-hand post when put through by a neat through ball by Mamadou Coulibaly.
To compound the problem, Gimenez then saw another chance to pull one back taken away from him.
He had the ball on the penalty spot, only for VAR intervention to overrule a decision to award a foul on Bruno de Oliveira in the box.
On viewing the monitor, the referee agreed the UAE forward had gone down too easily in the presence of Hassan Al Tambakti, the Saudi Arabia centre back.
Dalic shuffled his pack to try to find a way back into the game after the break – as well as quell the threat of Al Hammami on the wing.
The UAE did see more of the ball and halt the onslaught, but they found little joy going forward.
Late on, substitute Fabio de Lima came closest when he crashed a shot against the crossbar, then saw the follow up effort saved.
Other than that late flourish, Saudi Arabia were able to keep them at arm’s length, and closed out the win with relative ease.
And in the bad-tempered ending, Khaled Al Dhanhani, an unused UAE substitute, was shown a red card for disputing a decision.
