The national team loses from Iraq and mortgages its qualification to the South Korea match
The national football team missed the opportunity to reserve its place in the Asian playoff qualifying for the World Cup Qatar 2022, by losing to Iraq with a goal without a response scored by Hussein Ali in the 53rd minute, Thursday, at King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Abyad linked his fate to continuing the World Cup journey with the meeting with South Korea, which will be held next Tuesday in Dubai, as he needed to get a point only to meet Australia in the Asian supplement.
And the new coach of the Argentine national team, Aruabarina, failed to present his credentials in his first appearance with Al-Abyad from the bench, so Al-Abyad lacked good organization on the field, especially at the level of building attacks, so our players appeared in front of Jalal Hassan’s goal with the exception of only one time in the first half.
The Argentine coach began his mission with Al-Abyad by making five changes at once to the squad that played the last match against Iraq.
Khaled Issa participated in the goalkeeper, Muhammad Marzouk, Khalifa Al Hammadi, and Abdullah Al Naqbi, and Ali Mabkhout returned to the attack, at the expense of Ali Khaseef, Muhammad Al Attas, Abdullah Ramadan, Khalil Ibrahim and Tahnoun Al Zaabi.
Arrobarina also made fundamental changes to the way the game was played using a 3-5-2 method, in contrast to the previous method that the Whites used under Marvik's leadership, playing in a 4-3-2-1 style.
The team seemed conservative in the first half of the match, relying on the numerical increase in its half and trying to play on counter-attacks, and the Al-Abyad method did not succeed in achieving its goal due to the success of the Iraqi team in constant pressure on the Emirates players, so most of the balls were cut.
It took a long time for the UAE team to reach goalkeeper Jalal Hassan, until the 23rd minute, which witnessed a missed opportunity to score, when Mahmoud Khamis penetrated from the left and distributed a perfect ball to Ali Saleh's head, but the Iraqi goalkeeper managed to remove the ball to a corner.
After that, Al-Abyad did not take advantage of the state of decline that the "Blacks of Mesopotamia" were in, so he returned to the defensive reservation, and with it the Chinese referee awarded a penalty after the ball touched Caio Canedo's hand, but the video technology saved the situation, and the game was awarded a mistake on the Iraqi player Saad Al-Amir for pushing Cayo Canedo.
In the second half, the national team appeared relatively better, with a first offensive attempt led by Ali Mabkhout from the left, and he distributed a ball to his colleague Caio, but the ball was too long for him and the opportunity to threaten the Iraqi team's goal was missed.
But the "Lions of Mesopotamia" succeeded in an organized attack to advance through Hussein Ali, who took advantage of a pass gifted to him by Ali Fayez from a defensive mistake that fought to dodge goalkeeper Khaled Issa before putting the ball into the net.
The team tried to equalize and reorganized its ranks through some changes made by Arruabarina, especially at the midfield level. Substitute Khalil Ibrahim missed the opportunity to equalize from a ball that fell into the box amid the demand for a penalty kick, but to no avail. "77".
And the team's attempts to amend the result were renewed from a fixed kick by Ali Mabkhout that bounced off the post and was removed by the goalkeeper after that (87).
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news