Saudi to take on Bahrain tonight as 24th Arabian Gulf Cup comes to a close
After two weeks of exciting football action in Doha, the curtains will finally fall on the 24th Arabian Gulf Cup today with the final match between three-time champions Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, who are gunning for their first title.
The match, scheduled for 7:00 pm local time, will be held at the Abdullah Bin Khalifa Stadium and will have in attendance His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani who will also crown the eventual winners.
The Green Falcons, who stunned hosts Qatar 1-0 on Thursday to book their final ticket, are expectedly the favorites, going into the game, with their superior head-to-head advantage.
Of the 36 previous encounters between the two neighbors, the coach Herve Renard’s side have enjoyed the privilege of winning 19 times and drawing 11 with Bahrain winning on only six occasions, and when the two sides met earlier in the group stage of this edition of the region’s biggest football fiesta, it was the Saudis who walked away with a comfortable 2-0 victory.
"We have a strong team. And in the final, we need to play with humility. Since 2003 Saudi hasn’t won this competition, so the players want to make history. We just want to be ourselves. It will be completely different from the game we played against Bahrain in the group stage and we are ready," said Renard, a two-time winner of the Africa Cup of Nations with Zambia and Ivory Coast respectively, on Saturday.
"We are very pleased to have qualified for the final. I think we deserve it. So we need to concentrate very hard. This is the most important match. The players are very motivated and their level is getting better in each match. We want to be the champions," he added.
Giving an indication of his team's intended style of play against the Bahrainis, Renard said his team would not sit back and defend but would take the game by the scruff of the neck as they march out offensively against Bahrain.
As with the group-stage match against Bahrain and later Qatar in the semis, the Saudis will once again be counting on their star player Abdullah Al Hamdan, who was adjudged the man-of-the-match in both matches, for goals.
The 20-year-old Al-Shabab player has been one of the revelations of the tournament with his rock-solid performance so far and he will be hoping to prove it once more on the biggest stage.
Despite the odds being in favor of the Saudis who last won the tournament in 2003, the Bahraini side, however, have proved so far that they meant business this time around and that they are ready to leave their blood, sweat, and tears out on the field to end their agonizing 49-year wait for the regional trophy.
Enroute the final, the coach Helio Sousa’s men had played one of the best matches of the eight-nation tournament to send home the Lions of Mesopotamia of Iraq.
The four-time tournament finalists displayed high-level grit that is expected again from them tonight, as they came twice from behind to hold the Iraqis to a draw in regulation time before finally edging the three-time winners out 5-3 via penalty shootout.
"We are focusing on ourselves. By entering the final, we have bettered ourselves. But this is not enough. We play every match to win it. We can’t be happier than being in the final of [the] Gulf Cup. It’s our best performance. But we want to win it," said Sousa at Saturday’s pre-match press conference.
The Portuguese manager who had led the team to West Asian Football Federation Championship title earlier in the year admitted his players would be under pressure to create history.
"This is the biggest chapter for us. There is pressure, but this is the best pressure that can happen to us. We only have semi-professional championships in Bahrain. But we are winning against the best teams of Asia. The players are doing an amazing job. This is the pressure we want. To be here playing the fifth game. Against a top team," he said.
Whichever way the pendulum swings tonight, history is however bound to be made.
It is either the first four-time champions is produced (no country has won the tournament more than three times apart from ten-time winner Kuwait) or a country wins it for the first time. Whatever happens, one thing is sure – the fans are in for a thrilling time of football.
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