Omar puts Qahtani friendship aside as Al Ain host Hilal

11:10 04/12/2013
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  • Omar Abdulrahman has revealed friend and former team-mate Yasser Al Qahtani will be an enemy for 90 minutes when the Al Hilal striker returns to Al Ain for tonight’s ‘Battle of the Boss’.

    Al Qahtani scored seven Pro League goals during his loan spell in the Garden City last season, including a brace against Al Jazira which secured a record 10th league title for the club.

    The Saudi Arabia international has been equally as successful back in his homeland scoring 11 times in 17 games to fire Hilal to the Crown Prince Cup, while they currently sit second in the league.

    The AFC Champions League has afforded the 30-year-old a chance to reacquaint himself with Al Ain, and he will lead out his side in what has become a regional derby due to the fact the two side share a nickname.

    Abdulrahman was a fan of Al Qahtani’s long before he made the move to UAE football and is hopeful the pair can one day link up again.

    “I wished Yasser to stay in Al Ain, all of us wished for Yasser to stay because we really made the most of his experience,” Abdulrahman said. “Now we wish him all success and wish him to come back to Al Ain to play with us.

    “It’s true he is an opponent today but outside the 90 minutes of the match he is a brother, he is a friend.

    “But within these 90 minutes we don’t know Yasser. We are not playing against Yasser himself, we play against Al Hilal as a team and if we get the three points out of this match this will be a good start for us to move to the next step.”

    The sense of familiarity between the two sides is heightened by the presence of Cosmin Olaroiu in the home dugout. The Romanian led Hilal to one Pro League and two Crown Prince Cup titles during his time in Riyadh.

    Al Ain are the only UAE team to have won the AFC Champions League, having beaten BEC Tero Sasano to the title in 2003. They also reached the final two years later, losing 5-3 on aggregate to Al Ittihad.

    Abdulrahman said the current side – who go into the game on the back of a shock defeat to Dibba Al Fujairah last week – have taken advice from the class of ’03 but are not thinking about the final just yet.

    “They won the AFC Champions League and many more titles,” he added. “We have also won the league, and Super Cup. What we are doing is not to draw a comparison [with them] but we try to get the benefit from their provided instructions from because they walked in this way before us. So we try to make use of their instructions to reach the highest point of success.

    “Now we are not concentrating on the title, we are thinking about the Al Hilal match and then we take it step by step.”

    In Group C, Al Nasr travel to Iran to face Sepahan looking to improve on a run of form that has seen them lose six of their last 11 games.

    The Dubai-bsed club have slipped to sixth in the league but can at least take heart from the fact their last win came in the qualifying rounds of the Champions League.

     

    READ MORE:

    * UAE quartet to lead the Middle East’s charge for AFC Champions League glory

    * UAE & Al Ain goldenboy Omar Abdulrahman has the football world at his feet

    * UAE boss Mahdi Ali wants Abdulrahman to test himself in Europe

     

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