Abdullah Al-Jarfi was part of the UAE side competing in the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five World Finals in Brazil. In an exclusive column with Sport360 Al-Jarfi talks about the team’s fitness preparation, which earned the UAE a third place finish.
With an event like this it’s important to work out in the gym as well as playing football. With the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five tournament, the game is non-stop, so you don’t get a chance to breath. We have people who play eleven-a-side but a lot of us play futsal. In eleven-a-side you get a chance to relax and take a breath but in this game you have to focus the whole time, as you’re always on the move, so it’s important to have high fitness levels. We all go to the gym and workout regularly, it’s important to keep momentum in a game like this, and also you need to be strong because the other teams take it very seriously as it’s so competitive.
We don’t actually have a coach we are only six players so it’s up to each of us to make sure we’re in good condition for the game. There were better players than us on other teams in the World Finals but we played a defensive game and hit them on the counter attack. We were actually winning against Mexico in the semi final but couldn’t quite get over the line, and they ended up winning the tournament. We hadn’t played much together before the tournament, but we’re used to playing against each other in the UAE.
When we went to Brazil wanted to win the round of 32, which we did and we started looking at the other teams and began to believe we could beat them. We only had six players (one sub) and we decided to think strategically with which number bibs to wear. Basically our attacker was wearing bib number five and we worked our way backwards so the last defender would be the last to leave the field. [In the tournament a player leaves the field every time a goal is conceded] but we only conceded two goals in the whole competition so we usually had all our players on the pitch. Overall, we’re pleased with coming third in the world, but we are footballers and we wanted to win, but we are proud of what we achieved.
