The UAE national team’s all-time top scorer, Ali Mabkhout (34 years old), will be absent from the “White” list participating in the Arabian Gulf Football Cup “Gulf 26”, which begins next Saturday in Kuwait, and extends until January 3, 2025, which means that he is deprived of the opportunity to… Additional to write a new chapter in the list of legends of the tournament’s top scorers.
Mabkhout ranks fourth, shared with Qatari Mansour Muftah, with 13 goals, on the historical list of “Arabian Gulf Cup” scorers, which is full of legends whose names have been immortalized in golden letters, most notably Kuwaiti football legend Jassem Yaqoub, who maintains his record as the best scorer in the history of Gulf championships in total. 18 goals.
Mabkhout is only one goal away from third place, which is shared equally by Kuwaiti football legends Jassim Al-Huwaidi and Faisal Al-Dakhil (14 goals each), and four goals away from second place, which is shared equally by the Iraqi Hussein Saeed and the Saudi Majed Abdullah (17 goals each).
Mabkhout had previously won the tournament’s top scorer title twice during his four appearances with the UAE national team, as he appeared for the first time in “Khaleeji 2013”, where he was chosen by the coach, Mahdi Ali, to lead the offensive line, and at that time he played an important role in crowning the team in that edition, and giving the UAE its second title. At the level of Gulf championships.
On January 5, 2013, Mabkhout opened his tally of goals in the “Gulf Cup” tournaments, when in the 28th minute he scored the second goal of “Al-Abyad” against Qatar, in the match that the national team won with a score of (3-1), before returning again. On the eighth of the same month, he scored his second goal, and it came in the 40th minute of the national team’s match against the host Bahraini team, in a match that was decided for the Emirates with a score of (2-1), and Mabkhout won in the second round. 2014 in Saudi Arabia, he was the top scorer in the tournament with five goals, two of which came against the Kuwaiti team in the match that ended in a draw (2-2), before he repeated the same performance by scoring two goals in the victory over the Iraqi team in the group stage, while he scored the winning goal against the Oman team. In the third and fourth place match, which ended with “Al-Abyad” winning by a clean goal.
In the 2017 edition, Mabkhout was satisfied with scoring a single goal, which came in the group stage at the expense of the Omani team in the match that the UAE won 1-0.
Mabkhout returned in the 2019 edition to win the title of top scorer in the tournament with five goals, three of which he scored in the opening match against the Yemen national team, before scoring his last goal in the Gulf championships against the Qatari national team, in a match that ended in favor of Al Annabi with a score of (4-2).
Gulf Cup top scorers
1- Kuwaiti Jassem Yaqoub: 18 goals
2- Iraqi Hussein Saeed: 17 goals
2- Saudi Majed Abdullah: 17 goals
3- Kuwaiti Jassem Al-Huwaidi: 14 goals
3- Kuwaiti Faisal Al-Dakhil: 14 goals
4- Qatari Mansour Muftah: 13 goals
4- Emirati Ali Mabkhout: 13 goals
5- Kuwaiti Yousef Suwaid: 12 goals
5- Kuwaiti Badr Al-Mutawa: 12 goals
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