Yemen coach Ould Ali draws on 'emergency' experience as conflict clouds Gulf Cup

CAIRO, Sept 21 : Yemen coach Noureddine Ould Ali said his experience working in difficult environments would help him keep his players focused on football as they prepare to contest the Gulf Cup in Saudi Arabia against the backdrop of renewed fighting involving the kingdom and Yemen's Houthis.

Yemen were the first team to arrive in Jeddah for the eight-team September 23 to October 6 tournament, at a time when cross-border hostilities have intensified, with Saudi Arabia carrying out air strikes in Yemen and the Iran-aligned Houthis launching missiles and drones at Saudi targets.

Former Palestine coach Ould Ali said the circumstances were familiar territory.

"If you know my background over the past 10 or 16 years and where I have coached, people call me an 'emergency coach' because of the difficult circumstances I have worked in," Ould Ali told Reuters in an interview.

"I have some knowledge of geopolitics and experience from my time with Palestine. Today, with the Yemen national team, our focus is on football and on bringing joy to the Yemeni people and putting a smile back on their faces."

Yemen's arrival in Jeddah coincided with an announcement by the Houthis that they had targeted sensitive sites in the Saudi capital Riyadh with missiles and drones.

The Saudi-Houthi escalation has opened another front in the wider regional conflict that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in February.

Yemen has been mired in civil war for more than a decade since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention in 2015. A U.N.-brokered truce in 2022 sharply reduced the fighting, but failed to produce a lasting peace and hostilities have escalated again.

Ould Ali acknowledged that it was impossible to