End of an era as former UAE golden boy Ismail Matar retires after final game for Al Wahda

The passing of another football season always brings with it a certain finality, but when it comes to the 2023/24 Adnoc Pro League, it feels doubly definitive.

On Sunday, Ismail Matar was there for his final match for Al Wahda, the club he has – rather incredibly – represented for a quarter of a century. At 41, one of the finest footballers the UAE has produced consigned his playing career to the past.

Matar’s retirement prompted a flood of homages from Wahda – his boyhood club – Sunday’s rivals Sharjah, and on social media. As well it should.

Matar is a three-time UAE league champion and has captured every other domestic trophy as well, some more than once. For the national team, he first rose to prominence as player of the tournament at the 2003 Fifa World Youth Championship (more recently known as the Fifa U20 World Cup), on home soil.

Having scored a last-minute winner in the last 16 against Australia, Matar was selected for the award ahead of the likes of Andres Iniesta and Javier Mascherano. It marked a huge moment not only for the player, but the country.

His penchant to play protagonist continued through to the 2007 Arabian Gulf Cup; Matar scored the decisive goal in the final, the UAE becoming regional champions for the first time. Six years later, albeit in a relatively reduced role, he was part of the team who again sealed the trophy.

In between, Matar led the UAE’s bright band of tyros at the country’s memorable inaugural appearance at an Olympics, notching first in their opening match at the 2012 Games against Uruguay at Old Trafford. He would do the same in the last of their three games, against Senegal in Coventry.

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