Omar Abdulrahman
We were tentatively linked with him last January for £5M, but by the looks of it he's gone on to have a brilliant year this year. I wonder if we'll ever follow up in our interest. Looks a player to me.
Recent Guardian article:
[article=Guardian]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
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.”
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.
[/article]
We were tentatively linked with him last January for £5M, but by the looks of it he's gone on to have a brilliant year this year. I wonder if we'll ever follow up in our interest. Looks a player to me.
Recent Guardian article:
[article=Guardian]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
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.”
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.
[/article]