{"id":20112,"date":"2015-01-11T02:48:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T10:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20112"},"modified":"2015-01-11T03:00:20","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T11:00:20","slug":"uae-delighted-with-thumping-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/11\/uae-delighted-with-thumping-win\/","title":{"rendered":"UAE delighted with thumping win"},"content":{"rendered":"

AFC Asian Cup – CANBERRA, Coach Mahdi Ali lauded the performance of his players after the United Arab Emirates defeated Qatar 4-1 in their AFC Asian Cup Australia 2015 Group C opener on Sunday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite going behind to Khalfan Ibrahim\u2019s opener, the UAE bounced back with a four-goal salvo that saw strikers Ahmed Khalil and Ali Mabkhout net a brace apiece as the Emiratis ran out comfortable winners.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very happy with this win, especially as we worked very hard for this game as it was the key game in the group for us,\u201d said Ali, following the match at Canberra Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt optimistic ahead of this game after seeing the players putting in all their effort in training and camp. I was sure the players would do their best and this is why I was confident.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are celebrating for this game but tomorrow we will forget about this and focus on the next game against Bahrain, who is a good team and I am sure they will perform very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have three games in this group and the first game is very important because it gives more motivation and confidence for the next game. Now we are in a good position in the group and this gives us confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midfield playmaker Omar Abdulrahman was a key component to the UAE\u2019s win and was particularly effective in the second period when moving into the centre of the field where he assisted Mabkhout\u2019s second goal to cap an impressive display from the 23-year-old Al Ain star.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Omar is one of the good players in the team,\u201d said Ali. \u201cHe didn\u2019t play for maybe one and a half months, not even friendlies because he was injured in the Gulf Cup semi-final in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not expecting he would play 90 minutes today, but he worked very hard in the last three weeks and this is the output of his effort. He has a good future, I am very happy with his performance today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite a performance that satisfied their coach, the UAE still have room for improvement if they want to reach their previously stated goal of an AFC Asian Cup semi-final place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always think about improvement because we define success as to be better than yesterday,\u201d added Ali.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some other areas we have to work on. In fact, I think there are many things we have to work harder on if we want to go far in this competition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC Asian Cup – CANBERRA, Coach Mahdi Ali lauded the performance of his players after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":19958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":2227,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}