The Yemen national team coach, Noureddine Ould Ali, chose not to reach for a good old-fashioned football excuse for his team’s 1-0 loss to Qatar in the Gulf Cup on Saturday, despite a clear penalty that was not given his way. The defeat meant the Reds crashed out of the eight-nation regional tournament, currently taking place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a game of the group stage still remaining.
There are other factors that the Algerian coach could list for a defeat against a team that was at the World Cup in the summer. Qatar also have the Aspire Academy, state of the art stadia and a former Spain and Real Madrid coach – Julen Lopetegui – in charge. Yemen have none of those things and have not played a home game since 2012, a 2-1 win over Palestine in Sanaa.
Two years later, that capital city came under the control of the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group, provoking a Saudi-led intervention and years of fighting. The United Nations brokered a truce in 2022 that did reduce hostilities, but the situation has now escalated again. In early September, the Houthis swept down the Red Sea coast in its first major military advance in five years and have been targeting Riyadh and other places in Saudi Arabia with missile strikes.
At the time, the Yemeni national team had been training in the southern port city of Aden, home of the presidential leadership council, Yemen’s internationally recognised, Saudi-backed governing body. “The situation in Aden was OK, we tried our best and had a training camp with local players and then we joined up with the rest of the squad in Jeddah,” Ould Ali says.
“The situation is a political situation and it is not stable. In football of course, we have to be careful, we have a lot of attention on outside factors but we always try to focus on the football and to do better. In Saudi Arabia, the welcome has been great, the people are very friendly and there is a high level of training facilities, hotels and everything. It means that we could focus on football.”
Losing 4-0 to the United Arab Emirates in the opener was a reality check but the UAE have a lot of naturalised talent from overseas to count on and, domestically, the likes of Andrés Iniesta coaching in the second tier. Yemen barely has a top tier with the local league naturally affected by the fighting. And still they beat Bahrain 5-2 in their final group game.
“The league stopped for a long time and restarted this year and they finished the first half of the season,” Ould Ali said. “It is very important. The players need to play, need to keep fit and show their talent. The people support us. It is a religion in Yemen. Everyone likes football and the national team and follows their star players. The Yemeni people are the same as anyone else.”
Most of the players are still based at home and prior to the 27th edition of the Gulf Cup, Yemen was the only one of the eight never to have won any of the 26 previous tournaments and have never even got out of the group.
It is hard for the players to keep fully focused on football while in Saudi Arabia. “They worry about what is going on in the country and they hope that their families are OK,” the coach said. “This is normal but they are professional and I ask them to try to focus on the games. I have lived this situation before, I have geopolitics experience in the region.”
Ould Ali spent three years in charge of Palestine from 2018 to 2021, after more than four years as an assistant coach. Instability is not an unfamiliar theme for him. “Each situation is different. Yemen is a problem between Yemenis, not between outside countries. For a coach, Palestine was very difficult. The Israeli soldiers used to stop me for eight to 10 hours before I could go to work. The players are not free and when we played overseas, they stopped the players. It was a pleasure for me to work with Palestine, their difficulties are not made by Palestinians.”
A reunion with Palestine is not impossible at the 2027 Asian Cup, which will also be hosted in Saudi Arabia. In June Yemen, slightly surprisingly, defeated Lebanon to become the last team to qualify for the quadrennial tournament. “It was a great day for Yemen football and we hope we could make people back home smile for a while and that is what it is all about.”
In January, Yemen return to Jeddah for an opening game against South Korea and stars such as Atlético Madrid’s Lee Kang-in, Kim Min-jae of Bayern Munich and, of course, Son Heung-min. It will obviously be a step up from the Gulf Cup and the people back home really will be watching. “Again, we will try to make the people at home proud. It would be very nice to give the world a different headline about Yemen. When we are united we feel we can beat anyone.”
