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The UAE Olympic Team qualify to the Asian Golden Square

The UAE Olympic football team have continued their winning streak to qualify to the Golden Square in the 16th Asian Games after beating North Korea 9-8 in penalty shootout in their quarter-finals match played on Friday afternoon November 19th at the Yuexiu International Stadium. The UAE squad will face South Korea in the semi finals scheduled on Tuesday November 23rd with all the hope to make it to the finals. It is the first time for the winners to qualify to this stage in their history in the Asian games.

The two teams played a neat football and demonstrated a nice technical standard but could not score through all the official and extra times to resort to the penalty shootout to decide the qualifiers to the next phase. They squandered a number of chances especially the UAE side who came close to score in many occasions. Mehdi Ali, the UAE coach, made a compulsory substitute three minutes before the end of the game when he pulled out the striker Ahmad Khalil due to severe injury and brought in his colleague Mohammed Al Shihy.

Ali Khusaif, the UAE's custodian saved a number of attacks launched by the Koreans through the 120 minutes and he came to make the most important save in the shootout when he deprived the Korean player to drive the ball home in the ninth kick before Mohammed Al Shihy came to convert the last penalty into the net to take his team to the golden square stage.

Hamdan Al Kamaly, Amer Abdul Rahman, Ali Amer, Haboosh saleh, Omer Abdul Rahman, Abdullah Mousa, Ahmad Ali, Mohammed Jamal and  Mohammed Al Shihy scored for the UAE squad in the penalty shootout.