UAE warm up with victories

Two wins in their last two friendly matches before the start of the 2012 AFC Futsal Championship has given UAE coach Padu something to cheer about on his team’s prospects at the continental competition.

“We have shown good form and we will surely want to do much better in the tournament starting next Friday,” Padu said after the UAE had overwhelmed Tajikistan 4-0 in Saturday’s friendly game.

“The previous day the UAE had secured a hard-fought 5-3 win against Qatar, and this has given the coach enough optimism before the UAE take on Turkmenistan in their opening match of the competition on May 25. The event ends on June 1.

“We have been developing as a team and these two matches have given us so much to learn. The match against Qatar taught us not to be complacent, but be alert, especially in the defence,” he observed.

“And during our game against Tajikistan we worked on the previous day’s mistakes and tried to rectify them and therefore the good result,” the coach added.

In their game against Qatar on Thursday, the UAE was served well by goals from Yousuf Al Jawadi’s hat-trick while Abdul Karim Jamil and Abdul Aziz Abdullah Moosa added one each.

Qatar managed to match the UAE with Ahmed Raja bagging three goals, but they went down in the last three minutes, thanks to goals from Yousuf Al Jawadi and Abdul Karim Jamil.

In Friday’s match against Tajikistan, it was UAE having a strong hold on the proceedings with Abdul Aziz Abdullah Moosa and Ahmed Mahmood giving them a 2-0 lead by half-time. Abdul Karim Jamil and Bader Ibrahim added their names to the scoresheet later in the second half to complete the 4-0 romp.

The UAE has been placed in Group A along with Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand, who will be hosting the 2012 Fifa Futsal World Cup in November.

The UAE’s task at this week’s tournament will be to win at least two matches and advance to the knockout quarter-finals.

“After we take the first step of entering the knockout stages, anything can happen. From then on it is a matter of winning just one match and we can be assured of entering the Fifa World Cup in Bangkok,” Padu said.

“From now it is just going to be training for us till we shift base to Dubai two days before the start of the competition,” the Brazilian coach added.

sports@khaleejtimes.com