After exciting qualifiers and football matches in the unique Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five style, the FC team succeeded in “outplaying them” all and winning the five-a-side Omani football championship and has qualified for the world finals hosted by Qatar for the first time.
The tournament of speed, excitement, and suspense returned to Oman to give fans of the most popular game in the Sultanate and the world the chance to showcase their football skills, with two qualifiers and a final in Muscat and Sohar. The local qualifiers were held in partnership with Red Bull MOBILE, Oman Radio, Fitness Destination, and Radisson Blu Hotel, Sohar.
Special Omani skills
After amazing matches that reflected the Omani football enthusiasts’ distinguished skills, both on an individual and collective level, teams FC and Samba succeeded in making it to the final match of the Oman national final, which was held at Al-Tareef Club Sports Field on April 15. The players of both teams showed remarkable performances in the final match that fanned the flames of the crowd’s enthusiasm before FC team came out victorious in the end.
The Oman qualifiers were held over the course of two stages in Muscat on April 8 and Sohar on April 14, with the best teams qualifying for the national final. Throughout the competitions in Oman this year, dozens of teams consisting of five players competed in matches with no goalkeepers and that last ten minutes or until one team loses all its players. The rule that distinguishes the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five tournament is that the team that scores a goal gets to choose a player from the other team to eliminate
from the match. This made the competitions require speed and urgency to score at the very beginning, while simultaneously maintaining vigilance at the defense level to avoid yielding a goal and giving the opposing team a clear advantage.
All roads lead to Qatar
With victory in the Oman national final, the champion team qualified to represent the Sultanate alongside last year’s champion team in the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five tournament’s ‘Super Final’ in Qatar, where players will have the opportunity to play with Neymar himself and his team. The Oman champions expressed their enthusiasm at representing the Sultanate in the best way in Qatar, striving to score honorable results, and even trying to win to face Neymar himself.
The world’s largest five-a-side football tournament will witness a final that will be the most elaborate yet. This year’s event, hosted by Qatar for the first time, will see an unprecedented addition: all teams that qualified for the final canceled in 2021 due to global health restrictions will come back to participate in the Doha finals.
The teams that have already qualified will be joined by a whole new group of winners from the various local qualifiers around the world, making this tournament the largest ever. Another first this event will witness is the exciting "derby" matches, where two teams from the same country can go head to head.
Outplay Them All!
Under the title ‘Outplay Them All’ the Omani champions will face off against the qualifier winners of more than 40 countries, including Brazil—Neymar’s home—and France, where he plays alongside Paris Saint-Germain’s elite international stars. In addition to the prizes the winners will receive, the winning team in Doha, in both the male and female categories, will be able to play against the Brazilian footballer himself and his team of choice.
Neymar will join the best of the amateur players from various countries for the tournament that bears his name, which will be hosted in Doha later this year, before returning to Qatar in November to try to score Brazil a new World Cup title.
