Saudi Arabia and the Emirates will meet, on Tuesday, in the final of the twenty-seventh edition of the Gulf Football Cup in Jeddah, after a tournament that saw the defending champion exit early, Oman qualifying for the semi-finals by drawing a lottery at the expense of Iraq, and the Saudi team reaching the final match without conceding a single goal.
The match will be held at Al-Enmaa Stadium in King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah at nine o’clock in the evening local time, at the end of the first edition of the Gulf Cup hosted by the city of Jeddah.
The tournament began on September 23 with the participation of eight Gulf teams, divided into two groups.
The first group included Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Kuwait, while the UAE played alongside Qatar, Bahrain, and Yemen in the second group.
Saudi Arabia: Three wins, then 120 minutes against Qatar
Saudi Arabia topped Group A with a full nine points, after defeating Kuwait 1-0, Oman 3-0, and Iraq 2-0.
The Saudi national team scored six goals in the three matches, without conceding any, and finished the group stage six goals ahead of its competitors.
In the semi-finals, Saudi Arabia faced the Qatari team, the Asian champion, and the original and extra time ended in a scoreless draw.
The Saudis won the match on penalty kicks 3-2, after goalkeeper Mohammed Al Owais stood out by stopping Qatari attempts during the penalty shootout, including two kicks by Boualem Khoukhi after one of them was re-executed.
Saudi Arabia reached the final after 120 minutes, during which neither team scored.
Thus, Saudi Arabia kept a clean sheet in all four matches of the tournament before the final, including 390 minutes of play after adding extra time against Qatar.
Even after beating Oman by three in the group stage, Saudi national team coach Georgios Donis expressed remarks about the decline in performance in the second half.
Striker Abdullah Al-Hamdan also asked not to focus on the criticism directed at him on social media, indicating that some of the national team’s players were the subject of public debate despite the positive results.
Saudi Arabia has three titles in the Gulf Cup, the first title came in the Emirates in 1994, then the Saudi team won the second title on home soil in 2002, before retaining the cup in the next edition, which was hosted by Kuwait between December 2003 and January 2004.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has not won the title despite reaching advanced stages more than once.
The tournament archive shows that it finished runner-up in the 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2019 editions, in addition to being runner-up in older editions that were held in a league system and not through an independent final match.
UAE: Seven goals in the first two matches
As for the Emirati team, searching for its third title and first since 2013, it started the tournament with a huge victory over Yemen 4-0, before defeating Bahrain 3-0.
The team scored seven goals in the first two matches without conceding a single goal, sealing its qualification to the semi-finals early.
In the third round, the UAE tied with Qatar 1-1, and finished the group stage in the lead with seven points and eight goals scored against one own goal.
In the semi-finals, the UAE defeated Oman 1-0, with a goal scored by Othman Kamara with a header in the 22nd minute.
Nicolas Jimenez missed a penalty kick in the 56th minute, but the UAE national team maintained its lead until the end, reaching its first final in the tournament since the 2018 edition.
The UAE scored nine goals in four semi-final matches, against one goal against it.
According to the UAE Professional League, the confrontation with Saudi Arabia will be the fourth final match played by the UAE in the Gulf Cup, with the final match system.
The UAE won its first title in 2007, when it hosted the tournament and defeated Oman 1-0 in the final, before achieving its second title in Bahrain in 2013 by defeating Iraq 2-1.
The UAE reached the 23rd Gulf Final, which ended in a goalless draw against Oman, before losing on penalties.
Tournament course and top depositors
The Gulf 27 competitions witnessed the exit of a number of prominent teams before the final match, while deciding the second qualification ticket for the first group between Oman and Iraq by lottery was one of the most prominent events of the tournament.
The two teams were equal in almost all comparison criteria, after they finished the group stage with four points each, with an identical goal difference, and an equal number of goals scored. The direct confrontation between them also ended in a 1-1 draw, and they were equal in the fair play criterion after each team received eight warnings.
This equality came after Oman's victory over Kuwait 3-1 in the last round, compared to Iraq's loss to Saudi Arabia 2-0, so the Competitions Committee resorted to drawing lots after exhausting the comparison criteria, and decided the qualification ticket in favor of Oman.
The Omani national team had started its journey by losing to Saudi Arabia 3-0, then tied with Iraq, before defeating Kuwait and reaching the semi-finals, where it lost to the UAE 1-0.
As for Iraq, it was eliminated from the tournament in the group stage, even though its list included a number of players who participated in the 2026 World Cup, including Zidane Iqbal, Ayman Hussein, and Ali Jassim. His participation also witnessed criticism of the team's performance, in addition to clashes between players after the Kuwait match.
In the first group, Kuwait ended its campaign in last place without points, after three defeats against Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Oman, although it is still the record holder in the number of times crowned with the Gulf Cup, with ten titles.
Yemen was also eliminated from the group stage after losing to the UAE 4-0 and then Qatar 1-0. Yemen began its participation in the Gulf Cup in the 2003-2004 edition, which witnessed the number of participating teams rise to eight.
