Al-Dhafra

The 2019-20 UAE President's Cup ended for Al-Dhafra the way no final should: it never kicked off. The tournament was suspended as the pandemic spread, and Al-Dhafra, who had reached the final again, were left as runners-up to a match that was never played. A year earlier they had made the same stage for real, beaten by Shabab Al-Ahli. Twice to the final, twice without the trophy — the closest a club from the emirate's western desert has come to the country's biggest cup.

Al-Dhafra remains the only professional football club in the western region of Abu Dhabi, run out of Madinat Zayed since its founding in 2000. The isolation shaped the nickname: the Western Knights, a title with more to do with geography than swagger.

Their ground, Al Dhafra Stadium, holds 5,020 — modest even by the standards of the UAE's smaller clubs, and a fair reflection of a side that has built its history in the second tier rather than the top flight. The First Division League is where Al-Dhafra have actually collected silverware, and they have done it three times: 2001-02, 2006-07, and again in 2024-25, a gap of nearly two decades between the second and third. In between came the 2012 Vice President's Cup, the Federation Cup for clubs outside the top division.

What Al-Dhafra have not done is win the UAE Pro League or lift the President's Cup itself. The nearest they got to the latter was a final that was played and lost, followed by one that was not played at all.