Fabio Capello, the England manager, is unlikely to lose any sleep over the prospect of meeting Algeria later this month in the World Cup if their insipid display in seeing off the UAE last night in Nueremburg is anything to judge them by. Algeria are in Group C along with England, Slovenia and the USA, and Capello, watching the game from the stands, would have seen more reason to anticipate their upcoming match on June 18 if the evidence of their skills is to be defined by this game alone.
A penalty from Karim Ziani, awarded for a handball against Subait Khater in the 51st minute, gave the Algerians an unimpressive 1-0 win against a side 71 places below in the Fifa rankings in the friendly match, played in Germany. The Algerians try to play fast and furious, yet they failed to break down a stubborn UAE defence, who stuck to their task of spoiling and marking their opponents tight in an attempt to deprive them of space.
Rabah Saadane, the Algeria coach, was full of praise for the UAE at the post-match television interview with Al Jazira Sports, saying: "They came with a plan to prevent us from scoring and they succeeded to a great extent. So we must give credit to them. "It is always difficult to score when a team decides to defend. They did what was expected of them and we just couldn't break that defence. I am not after results in these games but a better scoreline could have always been good for the confidence of the players. Our preparations have gone well and obviously looking forward to South Africa. It will be a lot different out there and we'll try to do our best."
Algeria, desperate to round off their final warm-up match with a confidence-boosting victory after a 3-0 defeat to Ireland last week, will know they have plenty of work to do between now and their first game against Slovenia on June 13 after toiling for large stretches of the game against the UAE. They pushed hard and created several scoring chances, yet could not finish them due to a lack of composure in front of goal and some good work between the posts from Ali Kashief.
The Al Jazira goalkeeper made a number of splendid saves during the game, also displaying some bravery as he took a couple of body blows from Abdelkader Ghezzel and Rafik Djebbour during separate incidents in the game when the ball was loose in the box. Djebbour failed to connect a shot from inside the box off a cross from the right, and Adlene Guedioura and Ghezzel both put wide efforts when well placed.
The UAE having survived the early onslaught, settled well to hold them at bay for the first half, and were only breached by Ziani's spot-kick. The closest the UAE came to a goal was through Khater, who had a couple of free kicks on target, but Fawzi Chauchi punched out the first and then had to make a desperate dive to push out the next after it took a slight deflection from a defender. * Compiled by Amith Passela, with agencies