ABU DHABI // Scoring two goals to secure a trophy at the start of a new season is not a bad way to begin the arduous task of replacing one of the most prolific strikers to have played in the UAE.
Emmanuel Emenike is the player who has stepped into the role that belonged to top scorer Asamoah Gyan and, as introductions go, this was impressive.
Two poached goals and a night of incessant running helped seal a third Arabian Gulf Super Cup in the professional era for the country’s most successful club, a 4-2 triumph over Al Nasr, which, perhaps, was a flattering result.
On Friday, Zlatko Dalic, the Al Ain coach, had urged the club and fans to look ahead and move into a future without Gyan.
Dalic said Emenike, on loan from Fenerbahce of Turkey, was a hard-working striker who, he hoped, would score an early goal to get his Al Ain career under way.
Even Dalic could not have imagined a debut goal as early as the fourth minute.
Careless defensive work from Renan Garcia was overshadowed by a goal as slick as oil in its execution.
Down the right, Omar Abdulrahman played Lee Myung-joo into the area. His square pass found Al Ain’s other high-profile import, Ryan Babel, at the top of the box.
An elegant turn pulled in two defenders, freeing up Emenike who was left to beat only Mohammed Shambieh, before a crowd of 12,038 on a hot night at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium.
Garcia, who would not distinguish himself through the evening, had played Emenike onside.
The Nigerian’s second goal, to make it 3-1, came just over an hour later.
The defending was no better this time, Shambieh spilling a loopy cross from the right, and the finish, a tap into an open net, was even simpler than before.
The goals sandwiched an energetic night’s work for Emenike, suggesting that it is not just in hairstyles he will match Gyan.
The productivity, in sapping, humid conditions that forced water breaks, was impressive.
Apart from a brief spell early in the second half, during which they conceded an equaliser, Al Ain looked better than Dalic’s pessimistic prognosis before the match. They were underprepared, he had said.
He was not wrong, yet there was still enough to suggest that the reigning league champions will be a force again this season.
Even more impressive than Emenike’s impact was the that made by another, lower-key foreign arrival, Fellipe Bastos.
The Brazilian looked so comfortable in the centre of the field, it was easy to mistake him as a long-serving member of Al Ain’s first XI.
In the first half, especially, he was at the end of almost every midfield skirmish, either ready to emerge from within, ball at his feet, or to pick up a loose scrap, or to just be watching, on guard against a breakaway.
Neither is he purely a muscled-up enforcer. It was his cross from the right that set up Emenike’s second.
Minutes earlier, he had been at the heart of another slick goal, which put Al Ain in the lead.
Driving through the centre, he played a neat one-two with the substitute Mohammed Abdulrahman, before hitting an impeccably weighted, first-time, slide-rule pass to the onrushing Mohammed Fayez down the left.
The curled finish, at high speed, was a fitting end to a fine move.
By contrast, Al Nasr’s new foreign contingent was not nearly as impressive. Garcia was poor and the Brazilian Nilmar isolated and, at times, invisible.
Jonathan Pitroipa was at the heart of much of their attacking intent and Luis Jimenez flitted in and out.
What they lacked was a cutting edge, one that Al Ain, despite the absence of Gyan, seem to have maintained.
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