TMCnet News
Al Sarkal concerned about clubs' pullout [Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)](Gulf News (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dubai: The President of the UAE Football Association (UAE FA) is convinced that the sport is perhaps in its best state of health despite facing a few recent setbacks. After being elected to head the UAE FA in 2012, one of the tasks overseen by Yousuf Al Sarkal was the concept of ‘Football for All' in the UAE. While fresh measures managed to draw better crowds to the stadia, the smaller clubs suffered trying to match the better and bigger spending clubs. Last week, two clubs — Al Jazira Al Hamra and Al Raams — pulled out of the Tier II Division One League citing inadequate funds to operate its football teams in the competition. This has led to several meetings of the Board of Directors of the UAE FA with a fresh playing schedule being decided at a specially-convened meeting on Wednesday. "If we take this as an instance, then there's danger for football here in the future. It's a bad precedent with the two clubs pulling out at such a late stage, but this gives us even more energy to push vigorously with better marketing measures so that corporates continue looking positively at various competitions organised either by the Pro League Committee or the UAE FA," Al Sarkal told media during a customary media interaction on Tuesday. The top football official further responded that the various national teams have been fully prepared for some tough competitions in the near future. The UAE will send its national team for the Asian Games later this month, while the senior squad will travel to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to defend its Gulf Cup crown they won two years back in Bahrain and then go to Australia for the AFC Asian Cup in early January. "We always aim to be number one as this is part of our strategy. We are happy with the way the teams have prepared during the summer in Europe. Our aim in all three competitions is to be number one," Al Sarkal said. "Now that the teams are back our technical team will meet and see the various areas that the players need to work on to be further successful in the competitions that they are participating in," he added. Meanwhile, the acting General Secretary of UAE FA informed that the proposal to have an additional foreign player in the Arabian Gulf League (AGL) has been put on hold for the time-being. Considering growing ambitions of clubs in the country, the 14 teams involved in the AGL had recently mooted a proposal for the inclusion of five foreign professionals per team with four being allowed to play. The UAE FA Technical Committee has since met and decided to put the proposal forward before the UAE FA Board of Directors for a final decision when they convene again on September 23. (c) 2014 Al Nisr Publishing LLC . All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |