Power Eight Through To Play for Life In The Quarter Finals

The quarter finals of Imperial College London Diabetes Centre’s Play for Life-Football 2013 promises to bring some exciting competition to the Main Stadium at Zayed Sports City as a strong line-up of corporate team contenders vie for the Champions’ Cup.

In an interesting turn, the tournament’s two sponsors will pitch against each other on the fourth day of play for a place in the semi-finals. The gold sponsor, Cleveland Clinic (CCAD) – also the top goal scoring team to date (16) - earned their place following a very exciting standoff against ADNEC (1-1).

CCAD meet the sliver sponsor, ADFCA, whose performance over three games accumulated the points they needed for a place, even though SEHA took the game, two goals to one (2-1).

The night opened as Group C’s ActiveLife played a fierce game against last year’s third place team, Etihad Rail seeing them off 4-1. Daman’s team meet SEHA in the quarter-final.

On the neighboring pitch Mubadala put home five well-earned goals to take the game from the strong Injazat squad (5-1), sending Injazat home. Mubadala will take on ADNEC in the quarter finals.

Group B teams played the evening’s second round with HAAD booting the always good-spirited YAHSAT out of the tourney two goals to one (2-1). In tandem, the ADFCA-SEHA game saw the latter – last year’s semi-finalist - beat the tournament’s silver sponsor (1-2). ADFCA held on to a fourth night of play based on points.

It was a turn of the books for ICLDC in round three, as the Group A team ended its no-goal trend by netting one. This stirred up IRENA who came back strong in the second half to shoot two more goals home to win (1-3). IRENA are matched against HAAD for a semi-final place.

Meanwhile, Football 2013’s tournament official, Captain Ahmad Al-Issawi noted: “This is my sixth year at the helm of Play for Life. The corporate squads play a very good game of football that is about team spirit and embracing exercise, as well as some healthy competition.”

Play for Life - Football 2013 is part of Imperial College London Diabetes Centre’s public health awareness campaign, ‘Diabetes-Knowledge-Action’ under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak.

The semi-finals and the Cup Final will be played Thursday evening at Zayed Sports City.