The public got exactly what they came for. Lionel Messi scored a 110th-minute winner as Barcelona beat Argentine side Estudiantes 2-1 at Zayed Sport City Stadium in Abu Dhabi to become the 2009 Fifa Club World Cup champions. Everyone, apart from the few Argentine fans in the stadium, went home happy.
The news last week that the UAE was awarded the hosting rights for the Fifa Club World Cups in 2017 and 2018, after it was held here in 2009 and 2010, will be music to the ears of those who experienced it first time.
And with the hosting of the 2019 Asian Cup confirmed as well, it looks like the UAE football scene will wrap up this decade in even more spectacular fashion than it did the last.
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There is no guarantee that Messi will be back this time, or that Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo will make an appearance. But with the European champions almost certainly guaranteed, under the current Club World Cup format, a place in the final, the public is assured of at least two glimpses at potentially the world’s best group of players of that time.
As always, one of the big questions remains to what extent fans in the country embrace this tournament.
For European clubs, the Club World Cup will always play second, or even third, fiddle to the Uefa Champions League. South American teams tend take it more seriously, and perhaps so should local fans. Recent history indicates they will.
After all, how often do you get to watch the world’s finest talent at your doorstep?
When Messi chested in that late goal in extra time in December 2009, a crowd of just over 43,000 had descended on Zayed Sports City, mostly in the colours of Barcelona.
An impressive turnout, certainly for a football match in this region, although it must be remembered that Barcelona had just come off winning five trophies and Messi was already being hailed the world’s best player. Anything less than that would have been a slight on the achievements of Pep Guardiola’s record-breakers.
Some of the earlier matches of the 2009 Club World Cup understandably drew less interest, including the ones with Emirati participation as Al Ahli represented the UAE in 2009.
With the European and South American champions earning a bye into the semi-finals, the two quarter-finals attracted 7,000 and 10,000. Those numbers rose considerably in the semi-finals to 22,000 and more than 40,000 for Barcelona’s 3-1 win over Mexico’s Atlante, in which Sergio Busquets, Pedro and Messi scored.
The average attendance for the tournament, not including the fifth- and third-place play-offs, was approximately 23,000. That spiked to just under 29,000 in 2010, with Inter Milan’s 3-0 win over TP Mazembe in the final – Rafa Benitez’s last act with the Italian giants – attracting almost 42,000.
The matches had been played at Sheikh Zayed Sports City and Al Jazira’s Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium, both in Abu Dhabi.
It remains to be seen which venues will be used for the upcoming competition, but there will surely be a temptation to have at least some matches at Al Ain’s new Hazza bin Zayed Stadium, which opened a year ago.
The state-of-the-art stadium’s 25,000 all-seater would be ideal for the play-off and quarter-final matches, which in the past have attracted less than that capacity.
Then there is the matter of Emirati participation, with the host country entering its domestic champions from the previous season. In 2009, Al Ahli lost 2-0 to Auckland City in the quarter-final play-off and were eliminated immediately.
A year later, Al Wahda fared slightly better. They beat Hekari United of Papua New Guinea 3-0 in the play-off before losing their quarter-final 4-1 to South Korea’s Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, eventually finishing sixth. Should Al Ain – favourites to win this season’s Arabian Gulf League – continue their domination in the coming seasons, this would potentially throw up the possibility of the country’s best footballer, Omar Abdulrahman, on the same pitch as the likes of Messi, Ronaldo or Bayern Munich’s Arjen Robben.
akhaled@thenational.ae
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