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Al Shaab snatch a valuable point from Al Dhafra

Al Dhafra and Al Shaab shared points of their Etisalat Pro League round 22 match played tonight at Hamdan bin Zayed Stadium in the Western Region after a 3-3 draw, for the visiting team to return back with a valuable point raising their tally to 18 points in the 12th position while the hosts are 8th on 28 points.

The first session was a thriller from the offset and has witnessed four goals, two for each side. It was Al Shaab who created the first scoring opportunity through the Lebanese player Hassan Maatouk only 12 minutes into play off an individual effort after he stepped forward passing more than one player, facing the goalkeeper but his weak shot went into the custodian’s hands. The Guinean Makhete Diop put his team Al Dhafra 1-0 up with a powerful header capitalizing on a corner kick delivered by Saif Mohammed in the 20th minute. 

Al Shaab doubled their work afterwards trying to level the scores, but their Lebanese player Hassan Maatouk was guilty of squandering a lovely sitter in the 32nd minute, but they came to compensate for this chance one minute later with Faisal Khalil bringing the game into parity when he received a nice pass from Michael, past the keeper before sending the ball into the empty net. The visitors stormed immediately after scoring the draw with Michael being a headache in Al Dhafra’s defense scoring the second goal after he was set free with only the keeper to beat six minutes before the break.   But Al Dhafra replied in a space of two minutes when Mahmoud Awad leveled the scores in the 40th minute with a rocket- like shot from the edge of the box that went straight into the left hand corner to make it 2-2 by the end of the first half.

Al Shaab continued their domination of the game and Michael again was  on target scoring the third goal giving the visitors a 3-2 lead only four minutes into the second half. Al Dhafra intensified their work for Makhete Diop to squander two successive chances, but his team mate Hassan Zahran pulled one back in the 84th minute to end the game with a 3-3 draw.