Ismail Ahmad is committed to win the AFC title
In a statement to the AFC official website, Al Ain’s ‘international’ player Ismail Ahmad described their final first-leg versus the South Korean Jeonbuk as ‘challenging’ as they have to contend with their hosts on their home grounds and ‘crucial’ to Al Ain despite a second-leg will follow one week later.
Ismail said that Al Ain is determined to end today’s encounter in its favor despite that their hosts “can excel at the collective playstyle and shift very quickly to counterattacks. However, we have the experience to address such challenges.”’
He reminded that Al Ain managed to advance to higher levels of the AFC competition during the last three seasons because it is a grand team that can strongly compete in local and Asian tournaments to return the auspicious patronage of the visionary leadership and great support of their fans; “As for today’s challenge, we’ll take it with the intent of regaining the Asian title to our cherished country. Our strategy in this concern is that a second-ranked is not different from a bottom-ranked team,” he confirmed.
Ismail pointed out that Al Ain respects all AGL teams but does not approach anyone of them as a potentially threatening competitor. “In fact, Al Ain is a grand team seriously taken by all local peers. To them, playing against Al Ain is their most serious challenge each season; other non-competing teams regard their games against Al Ain as ‘Derbies’. Of course, our games versus the competing teams such as Al Ahli, Al Jazeera and Al Wasl are more exciting in terms of players, media coverage and fans,” he confirmed.
Regarding the challenge imposed by their South Korean hosts, Ismail confirmed that Al Ain fears no football team. “To prove our potential, we need to take serious challenges. Winning the AFC trophy is no longer Al Ain’s own pursuit; it now matters the UAE as a whole. Everyone at home expects good news from us,” he added.
Ismail saw the two-legs versus Qatar’s El Jaish during the Group Stage as the most critical landmark in their way to the finals. “They were really odd; we were not that bad, we were in a good position in terms of numbers, but luck was not on our side. Honestly speaking, we learned a significant lesson from those two games. Thankfully, we managed to outplay our Qatari rivals in the semifinals,” he concluded.
