JEDDAH, 16 May 2008 — The Saudi national 5-a-side football team returned home yesterday from Abu Dhabi where they placed second in the 4th GCC Indoor Football Championship for deaf held from May 9 to 17.
The defending champions and winners of the three previous events, the Kingdom team had a strong start when they beat Oman 6-1, but then suffered a 9-4 defeat by Kuwait. In their succeeding matches the Saudis crushed Qatar 25-0, beat Bahrain 9-2, and outplayed UAE 4-2 to place second.
Kuwait outplayed Bahrain 4-0 in the finale to emerge champions of the event via a sweep of their five games that gave them 15 points. Saudi Arabia collected 12 points, while third-place winners UAE had 9 points. The first three winners received cash prizes of SR 40, 000, SR 30,000, and SR 20, 000.
The Best Goalkeeper award went to Oman’s Mohammed Al-Muamari, Best Player to Kuwait’s Nassir Al-ajami, and Best Scorer to Saudi Arabia’s Majid Awad.
The Kuwait national team observed a minute of silence during the awards ceremony in memory of the former Emir Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah who died on Wednesday.
All the six GCC countries namely UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia participated in the tournament.
