Muscat: Saudi Arabia defeated Oman 4-3 to progress into the final match of the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) Men futsal championship on Saturday at Al Nasr hall club in Kuwait. With the triumph, Saudi will meet the hosts Kuwait on Monday at the same venue in a tight final clash. Kuwait sealed their ticket to the final as they blanked Lebanon 6-3 in semis on Saturday.
Oman futsal team hopes dented at the WAFF Men futsal championship to reach into the final for the first time. The gulf opponent started the game strongly as they managed to score an early goal by Mohsin Faqehi in the ninth minute. The opening goal gave much confidence for Saudi Arabia players to dominate in the field. This domination resulted with another goal by the same player to double the match result and made it 2-0. Later, Oman team pressed hard towards Saudi’s goalie and coach Younis al Fahdi raised his instructions to Oman players to stay focused in the attacking side. Zamil al Balushi succeeded to reduce the gap as he netted the first goal for the national team in the 17th minute while Mohammed Taqi equalised two minutes later. The first half finished at 2-2. In the following half, Saudi’s futsal team men bounced back strongly as they took the lead once again when Abdullah Maghrabi struck third goal after five minutes from the half start. Few minutes later, Mohammed Taqi scored his second goal and brought the result to origin point at 3-3. Maghrabi came back from behind to score the most important goal in the fixture and led his team to a 4-3 victory over Oman team.
Oman team advanced to semis of WAFF Men futsal championship after they led group B by five points. They commenced their campaign with a 4-2 win over UAE in the opener. Then, the futsal team was held to a 2-2 draw against Bahrain before they levelled with a 3-3 draw with Lebanon in the conclusion group matches. Lebanon ended their campaign as runner up with the same amount of points but with goal difference than Bahrain which finished in third place. The UAE team was positioned in the fourth place with nil point.
Oman futsal team will make their debut at the AFC Futsal Asian Cup which will take place in Kuwait in September. The Sultanate of Oman team will face a tough challenge of battling with the hosts Kuwait, 16- time Asian champions Thailand and Iraq in Group A.
