Post-Asian Cup exit, overachieving Mahdi Ali has scope for improvement

UAE coach Mahdi Ali's substitution strategies have come under the scanner. Wam

For every team but one, the end of a major tournament is fraught with the temptation to over-analyse what went wrong.

What conclusions can be drawn? Could anything have been done differently? And, of course, whose fault is it?

Inevitably, one man takes the fall. The manager.

After the UAE’s semi-final showing at the Asian Cup in Australia, and ahead of the third-place match tomorrow, one would imagine coach Mahdi Ali’s job is not at risk. Certainly, the Football Association seems happy with the 50-year-old manager who has won important matches for his country at every level.

Yet this is modern football: anything less than a championship means second-guessing, certainly in social media and probably in mainstream media.

In the wake of the 2-0 loss to Australia, Mahdi Ali’s substitutions have been criticised. None against Iran, three very early ones against Japan, and in the semi-final two players who had not played a minute in Australia.

His inclusion of a perhaps-not-quite-fit Hamdan Al Kamali earlier in the competition raised eyebrows. So did his defensive tactics against Japan.

Mahdi Ali, like any coach, is not above criticism. But anything other than credit at this point borders on ungratefulness. Without him, the UAE would not have come close to this sort of success.

He has squeezed every last drop of talent and effort out of a group of players whose development he has overseen for a decade. Sometimes, as against Australia on Tuesday, that is not enough.

The UAE were average, at best, against Australia, but it would be a stretch to claim they were outplayed by the home team or that Mahdi Ali was tactically out-witted by Ange Postecoglou. The UAE players, as the coach conceded, had run out of energy. Two costly defensive mistakes put the team on the back foot, and in spite of a minor recovery in the second half, there was no coming back from that.

The reality is that despite all the not-unjustified talk of a golden generation, Mahdi Ali has overachieved with this group of players. His record managing them at age-group level barely needs repeating.

Qualification for, and a fine showing at, the 2012 London Olympics. One Gulf Cup of Nations title and another semi-final. Mahdi Ali’s teams have never come close to letting the country down, and they certainly did not in Australia, where he showed his tactical nous is a match for any opposition coach.

Are there areas for improvement? Of course there are, and perhaps many.

Scoring is one. In 10 tournament matches, covering November’s Gulf Cup in Saudi Arabia and the Asian Cup, two players have accounted for the 13 goals scored by the UAE: Ali Mabkhout (nine) and Ahmed Khalil (four).

The squad lacks scoring options, and there is little Mahdi Ali can do about it.

Because of the influx of foreigners, most of them attacking players, into the Arabian Gulf League, few Emirati forwards are first choice for their clubs. Even Khalil usually is found on the Al Ahli bench.

Omar Abdulrahman could, and should, score more goals. Yet considering the brilliant work he delivers match after match, laying the scoring burden on his shoulders seems unfair.

There are other aspects of UAE football that need to be addressed, such as sending more players abroad, and they all deserve attention in due course.

But Mahdi Ali is not one of them. It is hard to imagine any other coach, Emirati or foreign, getting more out of this group. He is the right man in the right job at the right time.

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