Great Arab Championship match between Al Ittihad from Saudi Arabia and Al Ain from the Emirates. A crucial fight for both teams and especially for the home team, looking from somewhere to catch in a completely failed year.
The problems in Ittihad are many and are getting bigger lately. After their defeat in Iran they stripped the Uruguay coach Verzeri, who, of course, and who was in the team, did nothing. He just brought a Uruguayan footballer, not called a successful transcript. Fifth lucky in the team chair was the local Al Koroni, who in the first game against Al Nahda in the cup saw the charm with his eyes. The team is almost excluded from the institution by the worst team in the category and if it was not for the referee to leave Nahda with 10 players from 19 and push Ittihad as much as possible, the match would not go to the extension (2-2 by 0-2 at 15), where Al Ittihad qualified.
After the fight, Koroni made a statement reflecting the situation within the team. "I knew things were difficult, but I did not expect such a situation. I have many good young children, but I need players with experience to lead them to the stadium." Obviously, for a team that supported all of the season for its kids and brought a bunch of failed foreign players, which have so far offered little.
Al Ain is by no means in this situation. Of course, we had something strange about it, since after their victory in their first game, they stripped the coach Kike Flores and in his place took the famous Croatian Zlatko Dalic. Dalic had gone from Al Hilal to Saudi Arabia at some point, but he can not say he offered anything. Al Ain officials, however, tried to downplay the event by saying that "Kike would leave the team anyway. We need a good coach to build the new season, and Dalic's hand is to prove it might be that our coach of time ".
At the moment, Al Ain is a much better team than Ittihad. With players like Gyan, Brosque, Radoi and Diaky, it's good enough to make my eyes look like a favorite over this Ittihad. For another game Al Ain Omar Abdulrahman star will be missing, but the team learned to play without him, while the Ittihad question mark is the presence of Muktar Fallatah scorer who is facing injury problem.
Two things that frighten me in this fight are the instinct for survival of a heavy jersey like Al Ittihad, but also a kind of inferiority complex that Al Ain has shown against Saudi Arabian teams in the past. But I can not deny that for me Al Ain plays the role of a favorite in this game, so I see value in the performance they give her not to lose.