Caio Canedo: 'We’re chasing dreams, history ... we will give our life to reach World Cup'

Caio Canedo looks down at the UAE logo on his crisp red and white, national-team issue training top, and says earnestly: “All my celebrations when I score, I'm touching my chest, I’m grabbing the flag, the country. It’s what I told you: I need to give back what they have given me, which is so much. So every time I enter the field I represent the country, I represent millions of people here.

“I have a responsibility; not only to my family, but to colours, to flag, the UAE people. I carry this with me a lot. Every single game. When I score you see high spirits, pride. Because I know I’m making a lot of people proud.”

Born in Brazil, then spending his formative years in the United States before returning to his country of birth to begin his professional football career, Canedo sits now in a hotel in Doha, not long from what he hopes will be a principal role in helping the UAE qualify for a second World Cup.

On Tuesday, the national team contest their most important match in more than two decades, an Asian play-off against Australia at the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium in Al Rayyan. Win, and the UAE face Peru next week at the same venue – one of the eight that will later this year host football’s showpiece event - for a place at the World Cup.

The UAE have sampled a global finals only once before, in 1990, the year Canedo was born. The digits are inked on his right forearm.

“I told my wife maybe this is destiny,” Canedo smiles. “In 1990, the first time the UAE went through to the World Cup. I said it's destiny, it’s written, we’re going. We’re chasing it.”

Granted UAE citizenship in 2020 along with Fabio De Lima and Sebastian Tagliabue, Canedo’s connection to the Emirates is clear. It runs deep – since arriving in the country to