Imports dominate the scoring game

Ideally, a domestic league should be a crucible for homegrown players to hone their skills. And the most sublime skill is, of course, scoring goals.

The reality of the domestic league is that many football talents are polished, particularly during the high-stakes Pro League matches, but goal-scoring is a skill left to foreigners to perfect. And it is fair to wonder how much more difficult it makes the national team's task as it prepares for the Asian Cup, which begins in Qatar tomorrow.

Scoring is expatriate work in the Pro League. The league's top 16 scorers all carry foreign passports and have, among them, nearly half the goals (109 of 220) scored in 65 matches contested this season. That does not account for all the goals scored by foreigners; just the top 16 from a corps that, by rule, never totals more than three per side on the field.

Every top-flight club in the country counts a foreigner as their top scorer. Nine of the 12 sides have foreigners as their top two scorers.

Rare is the club that allows Emiratis into attacking roles, and even then it usually is as a midfielder.

Ismail Mater of Al Wahda often plays as a withdrawn forward. Saeed al Kas at Al Wasl usually is up top with his side's first XI.

And then we are about done with Emirati forwards in the Pro League, certainly as relates to the squad which coach Srecko Katanec is readying for Qatar.

Collectively, it seems a sad state of affairs. But to break it down club by club is to recognize the harsh realities at work in a league where coaches make very good livings and would like to maintain them.

For individual sides, the smart move today, and next month, and probably next year, as well, is to flood the attack with expats. Brazilians such as Baiano and Pinga; Africans such as Senghor and Diaky; Europeans such as Yeste, Dufrennes and N'dri. One senses that the league is committed to the lofty concept of developing Emirati strikers - as long as it happens with another club. Even clubs at the bottom of the table are loath to take a chance with Emiratis on the sharp end of the attack. N'dri plays for Dubai; Dufrennes for Kalba.

It is telling, but perhaps arithmetically inevitable, that the highest-scoring Emirati in the Pro League who is in the national squad is a defender, the lanky Ahmed Jumaa of Al Jazira, who has four goals.

No other player in the national side has scored more than two Pro League goals from 11 matches. Even the highly regarded Matar, who remains the most technically adept player in the national side, is primarily a facilitator at the club level for the Brazilians Fernando Baiano and Hugo Henrique. Matar himself has a solitary Pro League goal this season, though he reminded us all of his potential with a marvellous strike in the Club World Cup.

The 23 players whom Katanec takes to Doha tomorrow would seem to be solid in goal, across the back, and capable in midfield, whatever combinations Katanec employs. Several of them come forward often enough, and with enough polish, to have made a mark in the Pro League. The midfielder Subait Khater has two goals and is a fine dead-ball striker; fellow mids Omer Abdulrahman and Theyab Awana each have a pair of goals, as do the defenders Hamdan al Kamali, Abdullah Mousa and Khaled Sabeel.

But the men most likely to be in front of goal have enjoyed modest success. Matar, we have mentioned. The great hope is Ahmed Khalil, only 19, a proven scorer in age-group competition who, at Ahli, usually comes on as a substitute and has two goals. He now likely will be asked to score against the best teams in Asia, and perhaps he will. His Pro League experience, however, will not have offered him much experience in the process.