African Nations Cup

[arsenal7]

One should respect others opinion whether he likes it or not. Secondly, there are many somalis who watch the saudi and UAE leagues let alone the Asian cup, People have different tastes.

Brother, you and Baasto should ignore the trolls. Speaking of the UAE, I watched the game between UAE and Iran at the Asian Cup and in the UAE team, there was this number 10 dude, Omer Abdirahman who looks like the Brazilian David Luis, he is highly talented, can dribble the ball past opposition players with ease and his passes are precise and lethal. He reminded me of Messi. He previously had trials with your team Arsenal and can't fathom why he isn't playing for them. Check him on YouTube.

I know omer he is a talented player, him having a trial with Arsenal was just a rumor. He will fit much better in La liga or the french league because the BPL is more rough compared to the other leagues. He is talented but he lacks the physicality, pace, etc of a premier league player.

[Machiavelli2]

I know omer he is a talented player, him having a trial with Arsenal was just a rumor. He will fit much better in La liga or the french league because the BPL is more rough compared to the other leagues. He is talented but he lacks the physicality, pace, etc of a premier league player.

Arsenal

Thanks, I read his Al-Eyn club were offended by the one week trial Arsenal offered him and rejected it. They consider him to be a complete player ready to join any major league team and not a rookie requiring a trial, which I agree. Good luck to him.

Updates to the results of the ACN.

Algeria 3- South Africa 1

Ivory Coast 1 - 1 Guinea

Mali 0 - 0 Cameroon (50th minute)

[Oxidant]

all valid points Baasto, but not african team ever made it quarter finals. Even Asia made it to there. Even the Americans who were couple years ago beat by shitty Iran are miles ahead of them. I give Algera , Egypt are great african teams because they are not jareer


ps. How do you watch 22 dark jareers playing football? i don't even recognize the players since they are all butt dark

Senegal 2002 and Ghana 2010 made the quarter finals. Ghana was a straight kick away from the semi-finals and Senegal lost in extra time in 2002.

America is not better than any African team. Did you not watch Ghana-USA? In both 2010 and 2014 Ghana were clearly the better. Heck, even Ghana lost in 2014 to America yet they were much superior to America. Ghana is the team that challenged Germany the most.

[Oxidant]

One should respect others opinion whether he likes it or not. Secondly, there are many somalis who watch the saudi and UAE leagues let alone the Asian cup, People have different tastes.

Brother, you and Baasto should ignore the trolls. Speaking of the UAE, I watched the game between UAE and Iran at the Asian Cup and in the UAE team, there was this number 10 dude, Omer Abdirahman who looks like the Brazilian David Luis, he is highly talented, can dribble the ball past opposition players with ease and his passes are precise and lethal. He reminded me of Messi. He previously had trials with your team Arsenal and can't fathom why he isn't playing for them. Check him on YouTube.

I have been watching the Asian Cup. This kid is class above. He actually had a trial for Man City but couldn’t get a move/loan because of work permit issue and national team issues.

[Oxidant]

We may not have many of the household celebrity players we had at that era, but the one positive aspect about the tournament is many former lowly African teams have improved their performances and can beat any star studded team. How else can you explain when Zambia beat super-stars Ivory Coast at the final of the ACN in 2011?

Football is more competitive than ever. Nigeria lost to Congo and Sudan in the qualifiers for ACN. Ghana lost to Uganda and so on. The quality is the same but winning for the big powerhouses is not guaranteed anymore.

2014 was a great WC for Africa. Had Ivory Coast not conceded that last minute penalty to Greece, you would have had 3 African nations in the knock out rounds. So I don't think the quality has gone down at all

[MrSalih]

There is already a thread about the asian cup.caucasian

banu hashim somalis with straight hair

watch asian cup.

Blackrain.the brazilians, dutch, french are full of of kneegrows.actually, ,european coaches have taken the flair out of african teams.#tell me a cadaan player more skillful than okocha.?#

Sad part is this is TRUTH to many here.



Signed Salih....

[Machiavelli2]

Enjoy some of the talents of Omer Abdirahman.



This was a couple of days ago at the Asian Cup UAE against Uzbekistan



The UAE walked all over Qatar.



Updates to ACN results.

Mali - 1 Cameroon -1

Equatorial Guinea 0 - Burkina Faso -0

Half Time Gabon 0 - 0 Congo

[arsenal7]

As I said before, he is a good player but the premier league doesn't suit him

[BlackRain]

Baasto

Zambia have just a point after their 1-1 draw with DR Congo, and their loss against Tunisia was made even worse after Mayuka left the stadium in an ambulance with a potentially serious groin injury -- after celebrating his goal with a series of backflips

[zumaale]

There is already a thread about the asian cup.caucasian banu hashim somalis with straight hair watch asian cup.

Blackrain.the brazilians, dutch, french are full of of kneegrows.actually, ,european coaches have taken the flair out of african teams.#tell me a cadaan player more skillful than okocha.?#

Zola

[thykhin]

Who would watch bunch of jareers with big nose chasing a ball? No brain with these africans . Just a lot of physicality and little big of skill. It's not like the European cups where it's everything

When it comes to Soccer, You know these Jareers are far ahead of the Qaxootis. Somalia is at the bottom LOL

[Machiavelli2]

As we predicted of this talented UAE player.


Why Omar Abdulrahman is the UAE’s and Asia’s great hope

The gifted playmaker Omar Abdulrahman is on the radar of Europe’s biggest clubs, having shone at the 2012 Olympics and the recent Asian Cup, but luring UAE players away from home is not always easy.

Old Trafford, 2012, and fans were warming to a special talent starring for United culminating in an assist that a prime-time Paul Scholes would have been proud of. A first touch just inside his half of the centre-circle was a cool collect and turn, one more took him just past the halfway line and the third was with the outside of the left boot that fizzed past three light blue shirts all the way to the penalty area for the goal to be scored. It was 1-0 for United Arab Emirates against Uruguay in the Olympics and it was all down to Omar Abdulrahman, the best player on a pitch containing Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani.

For unsuspecting neutrals at the game such as my brother, it was a delicious throwback to a time when international tournaments threw up new stars, and at half-time he was texting: “Who the hell is UAE’s number 15?” It is no longer a question asked from the Middle to the Far East. Everyone knows who Abdulrahman is. He is the best Asian player playing in Asia (some think the last three words of that statement should be removed) and at the age of 23, for the sake of himself, country and region, the playmaker has to make the big move to Europe soon.

My brother was not the only one curious and soon plenty of scouts, agents and coaches were finding out more and learning how “Amoory”, as he is known, was born in Riyadh to Yemeni parents and moved to the UAE as a youngster. Coming up through the ranks at Al Ain, one of Asia’s top teams, he also moved up through the age levels for the national team, the most shining example of a so-called golden generation, a group of young players maturing at the same time such as Ali Mabkhout, Khamis Esmaeel and Ahmed Khalil.

Mabkhout finished as top scorer in the 2015 Asian Cup in January when UAE finished third but his bushy-haired team-mate won crowds’ hearts with a range of passing that would make Steven Gerrard proud and an impishness demonstrated in a perfect Panenka penalty that helped dump out Japan at the quarter-final stage. The continental buzz around him escalated.

“Each footballer has a wish to play for one of the big teams in Europe,” Abdulrahman said last summer. “But I’m still young and I know I must double my efforts to reach my target. There is no specific date for my professional career and I will take it as it comes. I know I will be fully supported by our sheikhs.”


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He will need to be. European fans may know of Sheikh Mansour and the hundreds of millions poured into Manchester City but in the UAE and often elsewhere in the west Asian region, wealthy club owners have often been reluctant to let their stars leave. For example, in 2006 Faisal Khalil signed for Châteauroux in France. The striker was delighted but his former club, Al Ahli, was not. The UAE’s football association did not issue his international transfer clearance. The owner of Al Ahli was, handily, also the Crown Prince of Dubai and had a few words and before long Khalil (reportedly later arrested for hiring a witch doctor to curse a rival for a starting spot) was home.

Ismail Matar was on the end of that Omar pass in Manchester but had bigger tournament moments such as emulating Diego Maradona and winning the Golden Ball at the 2003 World Youth Championships. There was plenty of interest in the diminutive dribbler overseas and vice-versa but apart from a loan spell in Qatar, it never happened.

Sometimes players don’t want to go. Regional stars get the big fish treatment at home and the prospect of heading to Europe as a virtual unknown is not always attractive and while average salaries in the Gulf can be overstated, the absence of income tax is a major plus. Perhaps that’s why Yasser al-Qahtani never got further than a Manchester City trial in 2007. The reports from the English media were not flattering, claiming that the Saudi Arabian striker and Asian Player of the Year arrived in England with a large entourage and was then reduced to tears in training by a Richard Dunne reducer and that was that.

If Omar can become the first west Asian player (at least in an Arabian sense as Iranians are happy to move) to shine in Europe, then he shows colleagues at home that it can be done and fans, media and clubs in Europe that the UAE and neighbours can produce top-class talent.

Yet there are worries starting to creep in that it may not happen. The offers have been there. In 2012, just after impressing on one side of Manchester, Abdulrahman was in action on the other, undergoing a two-week trial at Eastlands and doing enough to turn heads of the established first-teamers and receive a four-year contract offer from the newly-crowned English champions. The official story is that the move was foiled by work permit issues yet Manchester City sources claim that it was the player’s refusal that blocked the deal. Early in 2013, a year-loan offer from Benfica was turned down. The links – to Arsenal, Barcelona and plenty more – keep coming but as yet, he stays at Al Ain.

It was expected that this summer would be his time, especially as the contract with his club was due to expire. Then he signed a new deal in February. It has been speculated that the total package is not far from the €10m a year mark, not in the top tier of world earners but enough to make European suitors think twice about signing an unproven player from a perceived unproven region.

It really isn’t much of a gamble though. Despite the slightly dodgy knees (the fitness coach Raymond Verheijen said recently that UAE’s golden generation are at risk of being “squeezed like lemons”) and accusations that surfaced at the Asian Cup that he did not do enough defensively, Abdulrahman is the real deal. He can be a game-changer in all senses: in a moment on the pitch but also in the long term in how players from his region are perceived around the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blo ... ahman-asia