Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Dubai: Mahdi Ali, who led the United Arab Emirates to their first-ever Olympics participation in men’s Olympics Football Tournaments London 2012, has been appointed as the chief coach of UAE national team by the UAE Football Association.
UAE, one of the three representatives from Asia in the London Olympics, were crashed out of the group stages with a single point from three matches but they won lots of plaudits from top international coaches and players for their free-flowing attacking football.
Caretaker coach Abdullah Misfir was handling the national team’s affairs after Slovenian Srecko Katanec was sacked last September due to poor results in 2014 World Cup qualification campaign where the UAE finished at the bottom of Group B in the third-round of qualification featuring Korea Republic, Lebanon and Kuwait.
“He was consulted before an agreement was reached,” a spokesman for the FA was quoted by The Nation. “It is now a formality to complete the paperwork.”
The three-year contract will see him taking the charges of the Gulf nation in the AFC Asian Cup 2015 in Australia should UAE progress to the 2015 January finals. His immediate task is to prepare the team for the Gulf Cup in Bahrain which will take place in January next year.