2019 Asian Cup final
Japan v Qatar
Friday, 6pm
Zayed Sports City Stadium, Abu Dhabi
Japan manager Hajime Moriyasu believes the best is yet to come from his team as they bid to extend their record as the Asian Cup's most successful side when they face Qatar in Friday's final.
Having topped Group F with wins over Turkmenistan, Oman and Uzbekistan, Japan then saw off Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Iran in the knockout stages to reach Friday's title decider.
Monday's 3-0 semi-final win over tournament favourites Iran signalled the Samurai Blue's title credentials but they face in Qatar a team boasting the tournament's top scorer Almoez Ali and a defence yet to be breached in six matches.
Moriyasu said his side had improved with every match at the tournament and that he was confident Japan would be crowned Asian Cup winners for a record-extending fifth time on Friday.
“We are aware we are up against a strong team, but no matter who they are and how strong they are, we will play to our strengths as we have done all through the tournament,” Moriyasu told reporters at a news conference on Thursday.
“We respect every opponent and want do our best to win the game. We have reached the final having improved after every game, and hopefully, play our best football in the final.”
Having won their first five matches by a solitary goal Japan cut loose against the Iranians at Hazza bin Zayed Stadium. Moriyasu said his players had shown great aptitude dealing with each opponent's styles they had faced so far, a trend he expects to continue against Qatar at Zayed Sports City.
“We have come to the last match of the tournament and we have a better idea of who we play,” he said.
“The players can now read the game and are playing as a unit. Looking back, we played different opponents, sometimes we held the ball and other times we played freely.
“I don’t know how the game will pan out but we’ll play our own strategy and to our strength.
“We already played six matches against opponents playing different styles of football. We have one more challenge and we are confident we can continue to play well as we have played so far.”
Victory on Friday would see Moriyasu become the first to win the Asian Cup as both manager and player, having been part of the squad that won the 1992 tournament on home soil.
However, the former midfielder said now was not the time to focus on individual accolades.
“If that happens, it’s fine, but I’m not after individual records,” he said.
“We want to win the Asian Cup as a team for Japan and all other individual records can wait. We have come this far and now we want to finish it off. We are going into this game with the utmost preparation.”
Captain Maya Yoshida is the only surviving member of the team that lifted the Asian Cup in Qatar eight years ago under Alberto Zaccheroni.
The defender said that it was impossible to make comparisons between the two squad, adding that enjoying one more day's rest than their opponents could work in Japan's favour.
“That team eight years ago cannot be compared with the current squad because now we have a younger with more experience of playing abroad, particularly in Europe,” said Yoshida, the Southampton centre-back.
“We had had short intervals between games to prepare for the next but one advantage we may have is that Qatar has had one day [rest] less than us. However, all the same, nobody needs more motivation than playing in a final.
“If we can play as a unit at every situation the outcome will get better. The team is motivated and in good momentum. We can switch on and switch off on the pitch according to the situation. Hopefully we can win.”
We want to win the Asian Cup as a team for Japan and all other individual records can wait. We have come this far and now we want to finish it off. We are going into this game with the utmost preparation.
One cloud hanging over the final is the Asian Football Confederation confirming on Thursday that it had received a formal protest from the UAE Football Association regarding the eligibility of two Qatari players following Tuesday's 4-0 semi-final loss.
The FA allege that Almoez Ali, a 22-year-old striker born in Sudan, and Bassam Al Rawi, a 21-year-old defender born in Baghdad, do not qualify to play for Qatar on residency grounds because they have not lived continuously in the Gulf state for at least five years over the age of 18.
Ali played in the match, scoring the second goal at Mohamed bin Zayed Stadium, while Al Rawi was suspended for the match.
The protest will now be reviewed in line with the AFC Regulations, the governing body said.
When asked about the UAE's complaint against the Qataris, Yoshida said: "It’s [under the] AFC control and we don’t have anything to do [with it]."
How The Debt Panel's advice helped readers in 2019
December 11: 'My husband died, so what happens to the Dh240,000 he owes in the UAE?'
JL, a housewife from India, wrote to us about her husband, who died earlier this month. He left behind an outstanding loan of Dh240,000 and she was hoping to pay it off with an insurance policy he had taken out. She also wanted to recover some of her husband’s end-of-service liabilities to help support her and her son.
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Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi
Director: Kangana Ranaut, Krish Jagarlamudi
Producer: Zee Studios, Kamal Jain
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Ankita Lokhande, Danny Denzongpa, Atul Kulkarni
Rating: 2.5/5
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
Fighting with My Family
Director: Stephen Merchant
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Florence Pugh, Thomas Whilley, Tori Ellen Ross, Jack Lowden, Olivia Bernstone, Elroy Powell
Four stars
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
The bio
Favourite book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite travel destination: Maldives and south of France
Favourite pastime: Family and friends, meditation, discovering new cuisines
Favourite Movie: Joker (2019). I didn’t like it while I was watching it but then afterwards I loved it. I loved the psychology behind it.
Favourite Author: My father for sure
Favourite Artist: Damien Hurst
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
2019 Asian Cup final
Japan v Qatar
Friday, 6pm
Zayed Sports City Stadium, Abu Dhabi
