Al Ahli 2-3 Al Jazira
Al Ahli — Sow (pen) 28’, 88’
Al Jazira — Mabkhout 15’, 36’ 56’
Man of the match: Ali Mabkhout (Al Jazira)
Al AIN // Ali Mabkhout struck three times to strike right at the heart of Al Ahli and Cosmin Olaroiu.
The Al Jazira forward, enjoying a standout season for his club, stood up once again, hitting a hat-trick in the President’s Cup semi-final at the Khalifa bin Zayed Stadium on Friday night to maintain Jazira’s quest for silverware. At the same time, it halted Ahli’s.
Mabkhout grabbed a treble to make it a trio of close calls for Olaroiu, as the President’s Cup, UAE football’s most coveted piece of hardware, continues to elude him. The Ahli manager has this season led the club to the Arabian Gulf League title and an Asian Champions League final, but was denied a third successive President’s Cup showpiece by Mabkhout and by a determined and driven Jazira. The question now is where does he go from here?
Future uncertain, this could well mark the end of the Romanian’s reign.
“Any game for a coach can be the last,” Olaroiu said, remaining as cryptic as he has since he first insinuated he would leave last month. “We couldn’t do everything we wanted, didn’t play with the spirit we wanted to.
“Maybe we were unlucky in this competition, but I take responsibility for this. It has been a long season, we were close to playing the final, but we should take a look at the full season in the performances we gave.
“Maybe in this region when you win, a lot of things affect you.”
Given his profile and personality, Olaroiu will always command headlines, yet nothing should be taken away from Jazira: they were the fresher and more focused side, wholly deserving of their victory.
Henk ten Cate’s men went ahead on 15 minutes, when Majed Naser spilled Thiago Neves’ free-kick and Mabkhout pounced on the rebound. Ahli were level 13 minutes later, though, once Sultan Al Suwaidi trod on Ahmed Khalil’s boot in the Jazira penalty area and the referee pointed to the spot. Khalil had gone down in stages, yet Moussa Sow did not care, the Senegalese striker gratefully dispatching the spot-kick.
Then Mabkhout stepped up, broke out from the contest to break Ahli hearts. Nine minutes before half-time, he nodded expertly Park Jong-woo’s free-kick past Naser, while 11 minutes into the second half Mabkhout finished off a sublime passing move by dinking the ball over his UAE national team colleague.
By then, it was all over for Ahli, even despite Sow’s late second, Olaroiu’s season and perhaps even his UAE career robbed of a fitting finale.
However, that will have to wait for now, for this was Jazira’s night. Magic Mabkhout, with 29 goals in 31 matches this campaign, conjured another match-winning performance to lift Jazira to within one game of a third President’s Cup.
How fitting it was too, on a day that began with Ahli’s Ahmed Khalil being linked with a move to Europe but concluded with the UAE’s most talented striker stomping to the fore.
Olaroiu and Ahli are out, but Mabkhout and Jazira carry on regardless.
“I am so proud of my players, what they have achieved,” said Ten Cate, the former Ajax coach, who joined the club in December to rescue their spiraling season. “It has resulted in the final of the President’s Cup. We now go to the final and will try to win it. If we do, it will probably be my greatest achievement as a coach.”
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