JEDDAH, 9 December 2004 — With Iraq back in the fold and Saudi Arabia looking to complete a three-peat, the 17th Gulf Cup Football Tournament kicks off in Doha tomorrow with two matches.
Banned from the competition for invading neighbor Kuwait and triggering Gulf War in 1991, Iraq make their debut against Oman.
The other opening-day match pits hosts Qatar against United Arab Emirates.
For the first time in the tournament, all eight teams will start in two groups. Bracketed in Group A are Qatar, Iraq, UAE and Oman. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain make up Group B. Having won the last two stagings of the tournament including the one which ended early this year, Saudi Arabia aim to add the Doha event to their successes and maintain their iron grip on the premier regional tournament in recent years. But it will be a daunting task despite the fact that on paper Saudi Arabia are the more experienced side. The team was headed straight to Qatar yesterday morning after a 13-day training camp in Dammam. Explaining the team’s supposedly closed-door training sessions, former Hilal club player and current Saudi national team manager Fahad Al-Musaibeeh said “so far we did not decide to make Saudi training closed from public. We are going to make it open for everybody unless the Saudi coach decided to otherwise. The coach watched many tapes of the Kuwaiti team’s games in preparation for the big match on Saturday.” The Saudi coaching staff were worried when Hamad Al-Muntasheri, Muhammad Nur and Khamees Al-Owairan suffered minor injuries in training. But they did send home four others deemed unfit. They were Abdullah Al-Jaman of Al-Hilal, Osama Al-Muwalad and Meshal Al-Saeed of Al-Ittihad and Saheb Al-Abdullah of Al-Ahli, who all were hobbled by various injuries. Qatar aim to put a disappointing 3-1 loss to Saudi Arabia in this year’s final behind them and look forward to duplicate the spirit of 1992 when they hosted and won the cup. With as much a chance of winning, oddsmaker say, will be Bahrain which finished runner-up four times.
