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Al Junaibi: The UAE Professional Clubs are in continuous progress

The Professional League Committee held a press conference yesterday evening at Intercontinental Hotel, Festival City in Dubai which was attended by HE Abdullah Naser Al Junaibi Deputy Chairman of the Professional League Committee, Chairman of the Technical Committee and the official spokesman, Dr. Khalid Mohammad Abdullah the Managing Director, member of the Board of Directors and Mohammad Saeed Al Nuaimi member of the Committee Board of Directors.
Abdullah Naser Al Junaibi assured that the UAE’s professional clubs are in a state of continuous development, where they have professional players and coaches and prominent international names in the game of football which commensurate with current progress in various social, political and economic aspects in UAE.
Al Junaibi pointed out saying that it is not fair when saying that the clubs’ companies are not real.” We are on the right track, things started to improve and there is a change in the mentality of the clubs and we have not yet reached the end so as to evaluate these companies as this needs more time”, Al Junaibi said. He thanked all the UAE media representatives for their effective coverage of the AFC delegation's visit to the professional clubs, praising the achieved accomplishment through the application of the criteria of professionalism. He noted,” This progress saw forward steps in various aspects including the increase  in the classification of pitches – increase of stadiums for class “A” to 11 clubs although the required number in this criterion is only two clubs”.
Regarding the problem of attendance, Al Junaibi said, "We worked out some plans to increase the number of fans in the UAE play grounds, and now we see a big increase in the number of spectators during the first four rounds of the Etisalat Cup for the professional clubs,. There are many issues we will discuss with the clubs during the forthcoming period to resolve this problem and encourage more fans to attend to the various UAE pitches”.
On the other hand Dr. Khalid Mohammad Abdullah confirmed that the issue of increasing the number of fans on the stands is the big challenge facing the committee at the moment, noting that the Asian criterion in the average number of spectators was 3 thousand spectators and then increased to 5 thousand per match. Dr. Khalid said,” We have prepared studies and plans to increase the number of fans, and there is a field study will be presented along with the percentage increase in fans attendance”. The level the UAE football  have reached  so far, is an outcome of the work of  the previous administrations, stressing at the same time that it needs more time to get to the true meaning of professionalism.