Courtesy: Gulf Daily News


Diyar Al Muharraq clinch futsal title

by Tom Hanratty

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

DIYAR Al Muharraq were last night crowned the First Bahrain Futsal champions after beating Al Ahli 4-2 in an entertaining grand final at the Shaikh Khalifa Sports City complex in Isa Town.

The winners have proved themselves the standard bearers for Bahraivni futsal in a tournament that grew from strength to strength over the course of its two-month run.

Diyar Al Muharraq and their opponents last night, Al Ahli, were deserved finalists and they continued their respective form in the first half of an evenly-matched contest.

Crucially though, it was the eventual champions who held the lead at half time thanks to goals from Mohammed Sultan Abdulaziz and Jassim Saleh Annan in response to one from the penalty spot from Al Ahli's Ebrahim Ahmed Habib.

The sides emerged after the half-time break to continue their tight-fought affair but once again had the edge in front of goal as they added further scores from Annan and Ali Abdul Rasool.

Al Ahli battled on manfully but for all their endeavour could only muster one further goal through Bashar Abdalsamed and so Diyar Al Muharraq were the champions after their ninth win from a total of nine matches throughout the tournament.

Rasool then had the added honour of collecting the top-scorer award for the season as his goal in the final saw him finish seven ahead of his nearest challenger with 29.

Earlier in the evening at Shaikh Khalifa Sports City, the Bahrain Defence Forces (BDF) pipped Sitra for third place after a penalty shoot-out victory.

In another well-matched contest, BDF held the slight advantage of 4-3 at the break with goals from Fawaz Bu Saqer and a couple of penalties from Ahmed Ghalib getting the better of an Ahmed Antar hat-trick.

Sitra responded in the second half however and a brace from Jaffer Ebrahim Al Attar and another for Antar, this time from the penalty spot, put them on level-pegging with their opponents, who added goals from Ghalib and Ateq Saad Majed, at 6-6.

Amazingly, this was only the third time in 54 matches that two sides had finished level at the final whistle but, with third and fourth place to be officially decided, this one had the honour of being the first to go to penalties. Unfortunately for Sitra, their accuracy from the spot let them down at the crucial time and BDF were able to secure a 3-1 victory in the shootout.




Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com