London Olympics for UAE's young footballers

His name appears alongside some of football's greats such as England skipper Billy Wright, American Cobi Jones, Germany's Lothar Matthaus and Brazilian Cafu for being the seventh most capped national team player in the world. The UAE's Adnan Al Talyani has made 164 appearances for his country scoring 54 goals during his reign of nearly 14 years as an international footballer. After starting playing on the streets of Sharjah, Al Talyani went on to win accolades for himself and his country in a career that spanned nearly two decades with Al Shaab where he scored 129 goals in 232 appearances. After his formal retirement, that took place with a testimonial match between an international all-stars team and Italian side Juventus in January 2003, the UAE Football Association decided to make the best use of their quality striker by handing him the responsibility of being one of coach Mahdi Ali's assistants with the Olympic team. A dream was realised last Wednesday as the UAE fought off a two-goal deficit to defeat Uzbekistan 3-2 in Tashkent and earn a place at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Though tired after a hectic and high-pressure trip to the Uzbek capital, Al Talyani took time off in the early hours of Thursday morning at the Royal Wing of the Dubai International Airport to speak to Gulf News about this golden generation of players. GULF NEWS: What sort of preparations did this team have going into an important competition like the Olympic qualifiers and what exactly was your role? ADNAN AL TALYANI: From the onset, the coaching staff led by Mahdi Ali made sure the players were mentally prepared. We were ready for this tournament and though we had this extra pressure of playing home and away we ensured the players were kept motivated all the time. As for me, my role is more of a mentor to the players. They come to me and ask me for advice on how to deal with various match situations, and I am more than happy to do so. But your campaign did not get off to the best of starts, especially after those two goalless draws against Australia and Uzbekistan. What happened after that? What made a huge difference for us was that the fans came to the matches when we played at home. This showed that the fans believed in our ability to win and fulfil this dream of going to the Olympics. After two matches we had two points and that was not the best position to be in. At that point, the newspapers wrote that we were not in a healthy position to qualify for London. What happened after that? How did things change for the team? I don't think that anything is impossible for this coach and this bunch of players. We can do everything in football, and this is not just about playing at home but playing and getting results in away matches too. Today, when I look at this team I have a deep sense of satisfaction. We trusted them and they believed that they could do this. And here we are making history for the UAE. What do you think made the difference for this team? After we returned from China the players were tired. They had a tough Asian Games in China and they went back to their clubs directly without a break. But we cannot blame anyone here as the coaches needed to have their players back for club assignments in the domestic league. So when we started the qualifiers it was the start of the season and all our players were not prepared the way we would have liked them to be for an important competition like the qualifiers. And this is the reason why we started off with two draws. We took our time. After we won against Iraq we felt we had things under control. Until then we were unsure as well as we did not have the number of points to keep pace with Australia and Uzbekistan. And then we got the three points awarded to us by Fifa and that gave us good momentum to go all out for victory in the last two matches [against Australia and Uzbekistan]. How much better can this team get? We play very good as a team and we have some class individual players as well. All the people who come to watch us feel happy as this is one team that plays good football. We can keep the results on one side and look at how this played at the Asian Games in China. It was all about the confidence they had as a team. I think that with this team we can safely start preparing them to go all the way and qualify for the 2018 World Cup [in Russia]. Will this be the goal? Yes, this will be the next goal before this team. Their job is not yet done. They have a long way to go.