Al Ain FC

This summer in the USA there will be one team, playing in a regal purple that most global fans probably are unaware of. That said, their colours and badge – a fort – are probably the most striking of all the teams on show during this years’ FIFA Club World Cup.

The fort in question is Al Jahili Fort and it has become the symbol of the Abu Dhabi’s second city (for local residences it is familiar from ‘Al Ain Water’ – the most popular brand of bottled water in the country) and for being on the 50-dirham bank note. The fort’s silhouette on the badge has deep historical and cultural meaning: it was once the home of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s founding father. It doesn’t get much more rooted than that. The badge’s colours – royal purple trimmed with gold and white – further echo this legacy ( the colours were actually inspired by RSC Anderlecht – who Al Ain once played in a friendly tournament in Morrocco – the owners loved the look of their purple kits so much they adopted the colours). Top it off with two golden stars celebrating their two Asian titles.

The story of Al Ain FC begins in 1968, when a group of local players, foreign students, and expats in the oasis city decided to form a team. They had passion in spades, but in those early days, resources were as scarce as rain in the desert. Enter the Al Nahyan royal family. The young club found a patron in Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (who later became UAE’s President), who quite literally put them on the map – he provided a permanent clubhouse in Al Jahili neat the fort and even gifted them a Land Rover to shuttle players around.

By 1971, Al Ain got a modern stadium courtesy of Sheikh Khalifa, and other members of the royal family took the helm in club leadership. (Fun fact: the current UAE President, Mohamed bin Zayed, served as Al Ain’s club president in 1979)

Those early years weren’t all smooth sailing, though. The club faced typical growing pains, even a local rival breakaway at one point, until merging with a smaller club in 1974 to unite Al Ain’s football efforts. But by the mid-1970s, Al Ain FC had found its footing. They entered the national UAE league in 1975/76 and, incredibly, won their first championship in 1977. From a desert outpost team to national champions in under a decade – not too shabby for a club born in an oasis.

Thus began the era of the “Purple Reign.” And reign they did. Al Ain is the dominant force in Emirati football, with a record 14 league titles to date.

On the Asian stage, Al Ain have achieved what no other UAE club has: becoming kings of the continent. In 2003, Al Ain stunned Asia by winning the AFC Champions League, defeating Thailand’s BEC Tero Sasana in the final. Fast forward 21 years and the Boss (as Al Ain are nicknamed) did it again – in 2024 they claimed their second Asian Champions League title. After a narrow first-leg loss in Japan, Al Ain roared back at home, thumping Yokohama F. Marinos 5-1 in the return leg to win 6-3 on aggregate.

This summer Al Ain will be competing with fresh memories of their last FIFA Club World Cup performance – where they went up against the legendary River Plate in the knock out stages and beat them on penalties before falling to Real Madrid in the finals. So Al Ain are no strangers to playing – and defeating – the best the world has to offer.

So that’s the club, what about the actual city – because you need to understand that to truly understand why this club is unique.

Al Ain is often dubbed the “Garden City” of the UAE, a stark contrast to the glittering skyscrapers of Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Here, life flourished, with human settlements from 4,000+ years ago discovered. Their success in the desert came mostly thanks to the locally developed and ingenious falaj irrigation system which channels water to palm groves. In fact, the Al Jahili Fort on the badge was strategically built to defend the city’s precious oasis and its falaj water channels. The city’s very name means “The Spring” in Arabic, and its sprawling oases, fed by those underground aqueducts, were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011. The British briefly used it as an outpost for the Omani Scouts in the 1960s and it was those British trained and equipped scouts that became the foundation of the UAE’s armed forces after Sheikh Zayed led the unification of the Emirates in 1971.

This city was also the formative stomping ground of the Sheikh himself. He served as the governor of Al Ain in the decades before uniting the UAE. Under his guidance, Al Ain got the nation’s first wildlife park (Al Ain Zoo, opened in 1968 – the same year the football club was founded). He planned the city out with his advisors, using date palms to line and map out the road network before the roads were even built!

So, there we have it. Al Ain, the Spring, from where the modern-day UAE has sprung. From innovative irrigation, to unifying Sheikhs, to inspiring interplay on the pitch – Al Ain are not to be underestimated.