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Al Jazira host Dubai; Al Wahda face Al Wasl in Zabeel

Two matches will be played on Friday, September 30th  in the third round of the Etisalat Cup when Al Jazira host their counterparts Dubai at Mohammad Bin Zayed Stadium, kick off at 5:25pm. The hosts are intending to continue their successful march and preserve their position in Group “A” and stay on top of the table with six points. They maintained two successive wins in the first two games beating Dubai-based Al Wasl 4-3 and overcoming Al Wahda 2-1. Dubai  are classified in third spot with 3 points after defeating Emirates 2-1 in the first round  before losing to Al Ain with the same margin in the second game.

Al Jazira’s Belgium Frankie Vercauteren coach assured the importance of their game against Dubai pointing out that his team will miss the efforts of 8 key players, six of them are in National duty: Ahmad Juma’a, Juma’a Abdullah, Khalid Sabeel, Abdullah Mousa, Subait Khatir and Khalid Jalal and two others Yasir Mattar and goalkeeper Ali Kusaif are still in rehabilitation stage. “We respect our rivals despite of their deterioration standard from game to another and we will play to snatch three points. Missing a number of players is not a convincing excuse”, Frankie said.

On the other hand, Al Wahda are to travel to Dubai to tackle it out against Al Wasl at Zabeel Stadium at 8:30pm. The two teams have the same balance of points, but the host squad are runner up while the visiting team are 4th on goal difference. Al Wahda beat Al Ain 2-1 and Al Wasl defeated Emirates 3-0 and both teams lost to Al Jazira 1-2 and 3-4 respectively.

Austrian coach Hecksberger of Al Wahda said that the problem is not only in the absence of some key players as he was aware that the UAE National Team will play a decisive encounter against South Korea, but the death of Bani Yas’s player, the deceased Diyab Awana, made his players very sad and lose concentration in the training sessions in addition to the fact that a number of Al Wahda’s players had good relations with Awana.

Commenting on the game against Al Wasl led by the International legend Diego Maradona, Hecksberger said,” Al Wahda will play against Al Wasl and not Maradona. I am pleased to face my former team and meet some of the retired players like Humaid Yousuf and Ismail Rashid who are now joining Al Wasl’s administrative body. This is not the first time to face Maradona, but we had met before when I was coach for Austria and Maradona was the captain of Argentine and both teams were preparing at that time for the 1990 World  Cup in Italy and the game ended with a 1-1 draw”.