UAE Football

We support our local and national community through a wide range of activities. One of our greatest highlights has been our partnership with the UAE Football Association and sponsorship of the UAE national football team.

Giant UAE football jersey displayed at the 2007 Gulf Cup matches

For Dubai Holding, supporting sport and particularly football – the number one sport in the UAE – served as an effective way to get closer to our community. As an official partner of the UAE Football Association from 2005 to 2008, we focused on promoting education, fan spirit and culture. Some examples of our activities over this period are given below.

The coaches seminar: Tomorrow's Coaches

Guy Lacombe at 'Tommorow's Coaches' seminar

With “Tomorrow's Coaches”, we applied our general commitment to improving UAE management skills to grassroots football. We invited French football coach Guy Lacombe (trainer of Zinedine Zidane and Didier Drogba) to share his vision of grassroots with more than 100 UAE coaches from across the country.

UAE FA Fans Group

To help support our national football team, we created its first official fan group. The website (www.dhfootball.com - an Arabic language site) allows UAE supporters to contact each other, share their passion in the forum and receive constant information about the team. Today, there are more than 1,500 official active members.

Giant UAE jersey

Fans signing the giant UAE football jersey

We symbolised our support for the UAE football team during the 18th Gulf Cup in 2007 with the largest football jersey in the region – a 17m x 20m UAE national team jersey! It was signed by more than 20,000 people from all over the UAE, showing their support for the team before the competition. It became one of the symbols of the Gulf Cup’s victory in the hearts of UAE fans.