United Arab Emirates

Home 2011-13; Errea

Another shirt that I was happy to pick up a relatively good price on Sport Direct.  They also had the away shirt, which is the same template but the colours swapped.  However, I liked this and I think it more looks more like an international shirt than the red. It is made by Italian company Errea and the material is decent.  There is a mesh effect under the arms and on the lower back which is nice, but doesn't add a huge amount to the aesthetics.  The crest is another similar looking shape, and isn't embroidered.  An awful lot of teams seem to have adopted this new shield.  Whoever designed it did a good job though.  I particularity how the national flag has been worked into it.

For the team, well the early to mid 90s was the golden period.  An appearance at Italia 90 and runner up at the 1996 Asian Games is the best UAE has had to offer so far on the bigger international stage.  They did however, have greater success on the smaller-scale Gulf Cup of Nation.  A series of third-placed and runner-up spots culminated in going on and wining the thing in 2007.  Congratulations to them.

This is the second team in the collection to be managed by Roy Hodgson (The other being Finland), so I might have to develop a "Roy-Watch" form now on.

It is not surprising that they haven't been a world force, given the country has less than 10 million people, though it is rising dramatically.  That said, many of these are ex-pats. While the oil flows things look rosy in economic terms, but if that goes dry....