Yemenis at Asian Games divided by war, united by sport

Yemenis at Asian Games divided by war, united by sport
The Yemeni team at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China is the only sign of the country’s unity, according to delegation chief Abdel Sattar Al-Hamadani. (AFP/File)
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Updated 30 September 2023
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Yemenis at Asian Games divided by war, united by sport

Yemenis at Asian Games divided by war, united by sport
  • The Yemeni team at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China is the only sign of the country’s unity, according to delegation chief Abdel Sattar Al-Hamadani
  • Yemen’s medal tally in Hangzhou is zero with the multisport event halfway through

HANGZHOU, China: One delivered gas cylinders in government-run Aden for a living and the other cooked meals in Houthi-held Sanaa.
Now the two athletes from war-torn Yemen find themselves on the same team at the Asian Games.
Yemen has been in the grip of a war since 2014 pitting forces loyal to the internationally recognized government against the Iran-backed Houthis. The conflict has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
The Yemeni team at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China is the only sign of the country’s unity, according to delegation chief Abdel Sattar Al-Hamadani.
“We marched behind a single banner at the opening of the Games,” Hamadani told AFP.
“Sport has paid a heavy price for the war,” added Hamadani, who heads the Yemeni Basketball Association, pointing out the absence of any material support, apart from that provided by the International Olympic Committee and Asian bodies.
Said Al-Khodr, a judo fighter from Aden, worked in the morning and trained in the afternoon to make the Games team.
“The love of sport runs through my veins and I toil from dawn until 3:00 p.m. carrying gas cylinders on my back to deliver across the city,” he said.
“Then I take a shower and go to my judo training session nine or 10 kilometers (five-six miles) from home, said the 19-year-old father-of-one.
The athlete said he often hitchhikes to training because the transport allowance from his judo club “isn’t enough to cover my costs.”
The Yemeni economy was already in crisis before the Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014, prompting a years-long civil war between the militia and the internationally-recognized government backed by an Arab military alliance.
Khodr said at one stage he quit the sport given the difficulties, including a close call when shrapnel from bombing fell around the car in which he was traveling.
“I gave my uniform to someone else because I couldn’t bear to see it hanging up in my house,” he said.
“I lasted five or six months and then one day my feet took me to the club, and I had to pay $300 for a new outfit.”
Yussef Iskander, another athlete in the small Yemeni delegation, says he narrowly escaped death when a shell exploded as he left the hall where he was practicing the martial art of wushu.
One piece of shrapnel pierced his foot, another killed one of his teammates and a third caused the amputation of another’s foot.
The explosion happened in Taiz, a city in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula country.
“Because of the injury I stopped training from 2015 to 2021, but eventually resumed to raise the Yemeni flag in China,” he said.
A silver medallist at the Arab Games in Beirut in 2014, Iskander, who is expecting his second child, trains for about an hour a day.
“China has been preparing for the Games for a year and a half and we’ve been preparing for just one month here,” he said in Hangzhou.
Iskander rejects the idea of emigrating, but judoka Abdalla Faye, 29, wants to escape his war-ravaged homeland.
“I want to go to France, where judo is practiced, where I can flourish, but I have no money,” he said.
The Sanaa resident has two jobs, alternating between delivering ready-made meals and working as a security guard in the Houthi-held capital.
“I go to training exhausted, which doesn’t help me prepare for big tournaments,” said Faye, who came 17th in the -73kg category at the Games.
Yemen’s medal tally in Hangzhou is zero with the multisport event halfway through.
But Hamadani hopes his country can take part in the 2024 Paris Olympics, saying he has already received invitations for athletics, boxing and swimming.
He intends to lead an official delegation to France — if he can get out of Yemen, where airports are few and numerous checks are carried out by the warring factions for movement between areas.


Henrik Stenson, Kevin Na to play at season-ending Saudi Open in Riyadh

Henrik Stenson, Kevin Na to play at season-ending Saudi Open in Riyadh
Updated 8 sec ago
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Henrik Stenson, Kevin Na to play at season-ending Saudi Open in Riyadh

Henrik Stenson, Kevin Na to play at season-ending Saudi Open in Riyadh
  • The tournament, backed by the Public Investment Fund, will take place at Riyadh Golf Club from Dec. 14 to 17

RIYADH: Golfers Henrik Stenson and Kevin Na are to participate in the Saudi Open championship.

The tournament, backed by the Public Investment Fund, will take place at Riyadh Golf Club from Dec. 14 to 17.

Stenson said: “I am greatly looking forward to playing in the Saudi Open, as it joins to the Asian Tour. This will be my first visit to the capital, Riyadh, and Riyadh Golf Club, and I am excited to see the golf course and enjoy it in front of the fans.

“Playing against the top players on the Asian Tour in the season finale is the perfect way to end 2023, and I am determined to win the cup,” he added.

The tournament will offer players a chance to secure a place on next year’s Asian Tour, with the top 65 players in the final standings of the Saudi Open earning a chance to qualify for the 2024 season.

American golfer Andy Ogletree currently leads the rankings ahead of Miguel Tabuena.

Golf officials in the Kingdom have invited a new generation of Saudi golfers as well as amateur players to take part, including Khalid Waleed Atiya and Ali Al-Sakka.

Additionally, 12 other invitations have been extended to professionals and amateurs from Morocco, Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE, and Qatar.

Tickets are now available to purchase through the WeBook ticketing platform, with daily passes starting at SR25 ($6.7), and season permits also available.


Gold medals awarded across events on penultimate day of Saudi Games action

Gold medals awarded across events on penultimate day of Saudi Games action
Updated 10 December 2023
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Gold medals awarded across events on penultimate day of Saudi Games action

Gold medals awarded across events on penultimate day of Saudi Games action

RIYADH: Gold medals in events including equestrian endurance, beach volleyball and golf were awarded on Saturday during the penultimate day’s competition of the Saudi Games.

Prince Abdullah bin Fahd, president of the Saudi Equestrian Federation awarded the gold medal to the MS Endurance team at the conclusion of the endurance racing event at Al-Khaldiyah International Village in Riyadh.

Hassan and Qusai Al-Abdulbaqi won beach volleyball gold and over in the women’s competition Svetlana Ivanova and Francille Crispim came out on top. Also on Saturday, Azzam Alabdulmunim and Razan Zadah won cycling gold medals, respectively.

Othman Al-Mulla grabbed the gold medal in the men’s golf competition and Alexandra Van Oordt was victorious in the women’s, which were both held at the Riyadh Golf Club. 

Al-Ittihad’s Ammar Al-Hogbani was crowned champion over his brother Saud in the final match of the men’s tennis competition, which was held at the Tennis Courts of Prince Faisal bin Fahd Olympic Complex. Nadia Laaroussi, a player for Al-Nassr, won the gold medal in the women’s competition.

The Jeddah Deaf Club team won the gold medal for the Futsal after defeating the Qatif Deaf Center in the final with a score of 7-1, while the Riyadh Deaf Club secured the bronze medal after defeating the Mecca Deaf Center with a score of 11-7 in the third-place match. 

On Saturday, there were also medals awarded at the conclusion of the youth judo, men’s and women’s padel, sailing and handball competitions.


Al-Ittihad look to Al-Hilal’s example at FIFA Club World Cup

Karim Benzema will lead Al-Ittihad at the FIFA Club World Cup 2023. (@ittihad)
Karim Benzema will lead Al-Ittihad at the FIFA Club World Cup 2023. (@ittihad)
Updated 10 December 2023
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Al-Ittihad look to Al-Hilal’s example at FIFA Club World Cup

Karim Benzema will lead Al-Ittihad at the FIFA Club World Cup 2023. (@ittihad)
  • Reigning Saudi champions can take heart from fierce rivals’ march to last year’s final as they look to put poor form behind them

RIYADH: If Al-Ittihad are looking for a positive spin on their patchy form heading into the FIFA Club World Cup, which kicks off in Jeddah this week, they need look no further than their fierce Saudi rivals, Al-Hilal.

It was only earlier this year that the Riyadh giants embarked on their own Club World Cup campaign, and they did so on the back of a run of form domestically that saw them win only three of their seven matches before the tournament began, and included a shock loss to Al-Fayha in their penultimate match before jetting off for Morocco.

But wins over Wydad Casablanca and Flamengo saw them become only the third Asian club to make it through to the final, where they put in an impressive showing in a 5-3 defeat to Real Madrid.

On the scoresheet that night for the Spanish giants was a certain Karim Benzema, who will headline the star names for Al-Ittihad as they open their campaign against Oceania champions Auckland City on Tuesday.

That will give comfort to Marcelo Gallardo after his side suffered a shock 3-1 defeat at the hands of mid-table Damac over the weekend, a loss that has seen them fall 16 points behind Al-Hilal and drop to fifth place in the Roshn Saudi League.

Having won four of their previous five after parting ways with last season’s title-winning coach Nuno Espirito Santo, it is a loss that might also have shaken some of the confidence in the Ittihad side as they come to terms with life under Argentine Gallardo.

Despite the apparent gulf between the two sides, Gallardo knows there is no room for any complacency against the New Zealand side, who are no strangers to this stage, this being their 11th appearance.

They have also proved to be giant-killers in the past as well, finishing third at the 2014 tournament in Morocco.

“Any game in the Club World Cup is always very tough,” Gallardo is quoted as saying on the FIFA website.

“The first game always has the nervousness factor too. It’s one game only, a knockout match, you need to win to stay alive in the competition. We know Auckland will be tough to beat.”

Goalkeeper Marcelo Grohe also chooses to toe the party line, while saying the side are taking it one game at a time, but does admit: “It costs nothing to dream.”

With the talent they now have at their disposal — the likes of Benzema, N’Golo Kante, Fabinho, Igor Coronado, and Romarinho to name just a few — there is no reason Al-Ittihad should not be dreaming big and looking to match what Al-Hilal did last year.

But they enter the tournament carrying a far heavier burden than their Riyadh rivals did earlier this year.

Such has been the transformation in Saudi football over the past 12 months, it is no stretch to say Al-Ittihad are carrying the entire reputation of Saudi football on their shoulders.

While the investment is about far more than just results at the Club World Cup, it offers the first opportunity for Saudi football to show its wares on the international stage, and a good performance will go a long way to showing that Saudi football is indeed heading in the right direction.

A poor performance, however, and the critics will very quickly, and only too happily, rush to judge the Saudi splurge as an expensive flop.

While Al-Ittihad will attract most of the attention over the first week, it is worth remembering they come to the tournament merely as hosts rather than Asian champions.

That title belongs to Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds, making their third appearance at the Club World Cup after third (2007) and fifth-placed (2017) performances previously.

Like Al-Ittihad, they arrive in Jeddah on the back of a run of poor form that saw them not only slip from the top three on the final day of the J. League season, but also crash out of the AFC Champions League in the group stage after a shock defeat to Vietnam’s Hanoi FC last week.

Then there is the rather peculiar situation with the position of head coach.

Poland’s Maciej Skorza has already announced his departure after just one season in Japan, with Norwegian Per-Mathias Hogmo announced last week as his replacement.

Skorza will still take the reins in Jeddah, however, despite the fact he has already tendered his resignation and his successor has been appointed.

Should either Al-Ittihad or Urawa make the final, they will become the fourth team from Asia to do so in the last eight years — a nice feather in the cap for football in this region, in what is the last tournament to be played under the existing seven-team format.

By the time the next Club World Cup rolls around, to be played in the US in 2025 with 32 teams, we could see multiple Saudi clubs competing. It is just Al-Ittihad this time, but the whole world will still be watching.


Pakistan recall Sajid after Abrar ruled out of Australia Test

Pakistan recall Sajid after Abrar ruled out of Australia Test
Updated 10 December 2023
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Pakistan recall Sajid after Abrar ruled out of Australia Test

Pakistan recall Sajid after Abrar ruled out of Australia Test
  • Leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed sustained leg injury during match against Prime Minister's XI, says PCB 
  • Sajid Khan played the last of his seven Tests against Australia on home soil in March 2022

KARACHI: Pakistan recalled Sajid Khan after fellow spinner Abrar Ahmed was ruled out of the first Test against Australia with a leg injury, selectors said Sunday.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said Abrar will remain with the team to receive treatment.

"Ahmed injured his leg around the knee during the tour game and his MRI suggests rest and rehabilitation, which means he will not be available for the first Test," a PCB news release said.

Abrar will be assessed for the second Test in Melbourne from December 26, it said. The third Test is in Sydney from January 3.

Sajid, 30, played the last of his seven Tests against Australia in March 2022 and will fly to Perth to join the team before the match.


Shabab Al-Ahli hit Emirates for 7 as Khrbin shines for Al-Wahda in UAE Pro League

Shabab Al-Ahli hit Emirates for 7 as Khrbin shines for Al-Wahda in UAE Pro League
Updated 10 December 2023
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Shabab Al-Ahli hit Emirates for 7 as Khrbin shines for Al-Wahda in UAE Pro League

Shabab Al-Ahli hit Emirates for 7 as Khrbin shines for Al-Wahda in UAE Pro League
  • Leaders Al-Wasl drop valuable points while 9-man Al-Jazira thrashed at home

DUBAI: Champions Shabab Al-Ahli Dubai Club ominously smashed seven past sinking Emirates Club and Frank de Boer’s Al-Jazira suffered a consequential defeat in matchweek 10 of the ADNOC Pro League.

UAE prospect Harib Abdalla was one of three players to produce a brace for the holders when second-bottom Emirates – minus Spanish star player Andres Iniesta – endured a sixth-successive defeat, this time 7-0.

There were contrasting emotions at Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium when nine-men Al-Jazira were downed 5-1 by fast-improving Ajman, with an immediate board restructure being announced by the seventh-placed side.

Leaders Al-Wasl were pegged back from 2-0 up to a 2-2 draw by Al-Wahda, Hernan Crespo’s Al-Ain salvaged a heated 2-2 stalemate at Al-Ittihad Kalba in a contest played out with 10 men apiece for the entire second half, and Sharjah recovered from a dispiriting AFC Champions League elimination with a 4-1 beating of bottom-placed Hatta, highlighted by two-goal Guinean youngster Ousmane Camara’s bicycle kick.

Dark-horses Al-Bataeh returned to winning ways with a 2-1 victory against Baniyas, while Alfred Schreuder’s sleeping giants Al-Nasr failed to win again, suffering a 3-1 defeat at Khor Fakkan.

Here are Arab News’ top picks and a talking point from the latest action.

Player of the week: Omar Khrbin (Al-Wahda)

Some players are destined not to receive their dues.

This may feel incongruous when discussing Omar Khrbin, a maverick forward previously bestowed the 2017 AFC Player of the Year gong.

When the ADNOC Pro League’s leading lights are debated, Al-Wahda’s premier attacker is usually absent. Emirati internationals Ali Mabkhout and Fabio De Lima will be included and so, too, the likes of Al-Ain’s Kodjo Fo-Doh Laba, Sharjah’s Miralem Pjanic, and Shabab Al-Ahli’s Fede Cartabia.

But not the Syria international who has consistently delivered top performances since an unheralded acquisition by Al-Dhafra back in 2016.

The latest came with a brace in Friday’s draw against first-placed Al-Wasl, delivering a penalty kick and instinctive close-range effort to take something from a clash in which his current employers found themselves two goals in arrears, on home soil, by 19 minutes.

Khrbin’s recent career arc speaks volumes. The enigmatic forward has bounced between Al-Wahda and Shabab Al-Ahli since returning to the UAE from a similarly undulating stint at Saudi Arabia heavyweights Al-Hilal.

Yet, a creditable 54 goals and 25 assists have been produced in 91 ADNOC Pro League runouts. Only Laba (eight) has netted more often than Khrbin (seven) this season.

The tally is given further credit because the 29-year-old is not a traditional center forward – his expansive game is more nuanced than that.

Fifth-place Al-Wahda can look to him in confidence during their ADIB Cup quarter-final decider versus Al-Jazira and typically tempestuous derby with Al-Ain.

Goal of the week: Harib Abdalla (Shabab Al-Ahli Dubai Club)

Strikes of grander quality than Abdalla’s appeared through Camara’s acrobatics for Sharjah and Al-Ain winger Soufiane Rahimi’s rocket-fuelled free-kick leveller.

No goal, however, contained richer promise than Abdalla’s first against Emirates. For club, or country.

Shabab Al-Ahli had already let loose by the time their emergent 21-year-old phenomenon got involved in the scoring.

Goal No. 6 for Marko Nikolic’s holders came via Yahya Al-Ghassani’s burst of acceleration and adroit cutback to his UAE colleague. Abdalla did the business with a low shot from just inside the area.

There is a palpable sense that if this wing duo ignite in Qatar in the imminent Asian Cup, a third-consecutive semi-final run becomes tangible for Paulo Bento’s ascendant side.

The same also applies domestically for a Shabab Al-Ahli who emphatically rebounded from a potentially damaging 3-0 defeat to rivals Al-Ain.

Coach of the week: Daniel Isaila (Ajman)

Ajman are reaping the rewards of swift course correction.

The summer departure of history-making head coach Goran Tufegdzic to Al-Nasr was followed by the curious capture of Caio Zanardi, a Brazilian previously undertaking brief stints in charge of the aforementioned Blue Wave, Khor Fakkan, and Al-Bataeh.

Last term’s sixth-place finishers devolved into relegation contenders. That was, however, before October’s decisive hire of Daniel Isaila.

The Romanian, who led Baniyas to a stunning second-place finish in the 2020 to 2021 season, has registered just one defeat in six league matches, with depleted Al-Jazira being put to the sword at the weekend.

Bahrain winger Ali Madan excelled via a goal and assist against nine men.

The Orange Brigade can now look up from 11th under Isaila, rather than disconcertingly looking over their shoulder under Zanardi.

Does ADNOC Pro League have a problem with promoted sides?

An interrupted ADNOC Pro League will not reach the halfway point until February, but alarm bells are already ringing at promoted outfits.

Bottom side Hatta’s sole victory came against Emirates Club in 13th, who last gained a point on Sept. 29. A four-point gap to Al-Nasr can, surely, only extend once ex-Ajax and Al-Ain supremo Schreuder gets further time to imprint his philosophy.

That is not a new story. Al-Urooba and Emirates received instant returns to the First Division League in the 2021 to 2022 campaign and only Al-Dhafra’s remarkably low 12 points kept Al-Bataeh from replicating doomed Dibba Al-Fujairah’s fate last season.

Emirates’ gamble on Barcelona alumni Iniesta and Paco Alcacer has yet to gain reward on the pitch, while Hatta’s revolving door policy on recruitment has not helped. Neither CVs of bosses Lluis Planaguma and Fabio Viviani inspire belief, either.

Baniyas’ sixth place in the 2018 to 2019 season was the last time a newbie competed with aplomb. It is a situation which requires reflection from UAE football, at large.