First impressions last. Whatever morsels of good cheer Al Ain clawed back by beating Wydad in their last game at the Club World Cup will have gone largely unnoticed by the wider football community.
Everyone else was focused on Manchester City’s hammering of Juventus instead, rather than the Mena derby. The attendances said as much; 54,000 were at the game between the European giants, compared to less than 11,000 for the Al Ain-Wydad fixture.
Yes, they signed off on a high, after Kodjo Laba’s penalty and a fine strike by Kaku helped them to a 2-1 comeback win over the side from Morocco. But the club would be unwise to let it paper over the cracks that have been allowed to grow.
Vladimir Ivic, the coach, might have been targeting the final game as Al Ain’s one realistic chance of success. If that was the case, then it was mission accomplished.
But the memories of Al Ain’s first crack at this new-format tournament which linger the longest will be from when the limelight was at its brightest, against the stars from City and Juventus.
It is difficult to specify the greatest indignity Al Ain suffered at the Club World Cup. There were too many to choose from.
Maybe it was the sight of Erling Haaland arguing with the referee that not enough stoppage time had been added on after their second match.
City were 6-0 winners by that stage. Haaland and the rest obviously wanted to fill their boots even more against such easy beats.
Maybe it was Rui Patricio, the goalkeeper with over a century of Portugal caps to his name, being recruited as a short-term contractor. He replaced Khalid Essa, the club’s talisman, then waved through five goals in the opening game.
Perhaps it was the fact that Juventus’ players could go to the White House, have a toe-curlingly awkward audience with President Donald Trump, and still have enough to thrash Al Ain without getting out of second gear.
Or maybe it was Ivic suggesting not all Al Ain’s players watch European football, and were therefore somehow shocked by the level of Juventus.
They shouldn’t have been. Even if they aren’t all Serie A aficionados, they must know all the clubs at this tournament are champion sides. They are supposed to be good.
The only shock was quite how bad Al Ain were. Ivic himself had said ahead of the tournament that the club wanted to give the best impression of UAE football. For the most part, they did the opposite.
They had a goal difference of -11 after the first two games. This is what it had come to: a hotchpotch of players, many of whom barely knew each other, providing virtually nil opposition for the top sides.
The dual thrashings by Juve and City exposed what has been worryingly clear for some time. That Al Ain have been a side in steady decline since they won the 2024 AFC Champions League.
Or maybe even before that. That title was earned via some inspired displays and unlikely wins against Saudi Arabian giants like Al Nassr and Al Hilal, but it also came against the backdrop of indifferent form in the UAE Pro League.
When that continued at the start of the following season, Hernan Crespo, the then coach, was moved to point out “What we did [in winning the Champions League] was a miracle.”
He was unable to arrest the slide himself, and paid with his job. Leonardo Jardim came and went. And now Ivic is facing similar troubles.
One of the main concerns was the fact the answer Ivic seemed to land on in the US was to remove the side’s soul in a bid to compete.
In the first and last matches, there were no Emiratis in Al Ain’s starting line up. Essa, the captain and goalkeeper, was given just the middle match, against City. Coincidentally, he had a nightmare, conceding six goals.
But he must have been wondering why he had been left out. Within the short timeframe of group matches at the Club World Cup, there is surely no need to rotate goalkeepers – even ones as overworked as Al Ain’s.
Yes, Essa arrived later than the majority of the squad, having been on UAE national team duty, along with Kouame Autonne and Yahia Nader. But he could not have been too out of puff: he did not even play in the second qualifier of the national team’s international window, against Kyrgyzstan.
Clearly, no one will have expected Al Ain to beat Juventus or City. But it was the supine nature of the performances which was of greatest worry.
Their efforts did nothing to advance the reputation of Arabian Gulf football, but their woes perhaps show a flaw in the timing of the Club World Cup. It is a year since Al Ain won their place at the event.
If Al Ahli Saudi, their successors as AFC Champions League winners, had been in the United States, they would definitely have shown up better than the UAE’s fifth-best side. Al Hilal have certainly done so in reaching the last 16, with Saudi Arabian talents like Salem Al Dawsari and Nasser Al Dawsari to the fore.
Al Ain are clearly a long way from being Asia’s top team at present, so are not a suitable representative of the continent.
The novelty of the tournament has also served to show up their deficiencies. It has garnered far more attention than the previous guise of the Club World Cup did, largely because it is being played in summer, and not clashing with domestic league seasons.
And yet Al Ain were not bad in the previous version of this competition. The fact they reached the final in 2018, beating River Plate en route to the showpiece fixture against Real Madrid, went under the radar compared to now.
The blemish of this competition does not detract from Al Ain being a great club. But plenty of remedial work needs to be done for them to return to their former glories.
