Gulf 13 .. Kuwaiti Blue regains the title

The Sultanate of Oman hosted the Arabian Gulf Cup in its thirteenth edition, from October 15 to 28, 1996, at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex Stadium. This was the second time that the Sultanate hosted the regional wedding, as it had previously organized the seventh session in 1984.

The tournament was held with the participation of teams: Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE.

The championship competitions included 15 matches, during which he scored 35 goals, and the Kuwaiti team, led by Czech Milan Machala, succeeded in regaining the title and winning it for the eighth time in the history of the championship since its inception in 1970, and Al-Annabi Al-Qatari finished second, while Al-Akhdar Al-Saudi, the holder of the title of the previous version, came in third place. As for the Emirati white, it was fourth.

Qatari player Mohammed Salem Al-Anzi won the tournament’s top scorer award (4 goals), Kuwaiti Abdullah Wabran won the best player award, and Qatari goalkeeper Younes Ahmed won the best goalkeeper award.

The Sultanate of Oman starred in the opening ceremony of the session on October 15, 1996, as its paragraphs included a number of various Omani folk dances. The ceremony was held through the performances of a large group of male and female students, in which they expressed the cohesion and convergence between the Gulf youth and the spirit of intimacy and love that binds them in an exciting heritage atmosphere, in the presence of a large presence of Their Highnesses and Excellencies, the Ministers of Youth and Sports in the GCC countries.

And that version witnessed the birth of a new star for Kuwaiti football, Bashar Abdullah, who at that time joined the ranks of the team heading to Oman unexpectedly from the Kuwaiti sports community, and what increased the surprise was that in the darkest moments of the final match for Al-Azraq (9 points), in front of the Qatari Al-Annabi, who was not defeated (10 points), Machala made a substitution by removing the best player in the tournament, Abdullah and Bran, and involving the young player Bashar, so that Bashar succeeded in shaking the net of the giant Younes Ahmed after entering the stadium in only 4 minutes, and after 7 minutes of the goal he passed another ball to Hamad Al-Saleh to score the second goal. Despite Al-Annabi’s success in reducing the difference with the goal of Muhammad Salem Al-Enezi, Al-Azraq managed to come out with victory and achieve the exciting title.