Huh hopes Korea is cool with heat

A win against the last-placed Emirates would put the South Koreans within touching distance of a seventh consecutive appearance at the World Cup finals but the Taeguk Warriors will have to contend with high temperatures in the Gulf state that will likely to affect their high-tempo game.

Conscious of the need to acclimatise to the conditions, the Koreans arrived in Dubai on Sunday and played a warm-up match there against Oman on Tuesday which ended goalless.

"The heat made it impossible for us to practice during the day and we have to limit our practices to evening training," said Huh.

"However, I’m sure that the players will overcome the heat during the game.

"We have worked on improving our teamwork and set pieces. And we have also tried to attain coherence between the domestic and foreign-based players in our squad."

Jubilo Iwata’s Lee Keun-ho and AS Monaco’s Park Chu-young led the line against the Omanis but the Koreans were unable to find a way past Ali Al Habsi, who even stopped a late Ki Sung-yong penalty.

"We have seen the performance of the players during the game against Oman," Huh added.

"We will select the best possible line-up for the game against UAE and hopefully we can win this game."

Victory for the visitors would assure them of a top-three finish in the group and leave them needing only a draw against Saudi Arabia in their penultimate game in Seoul to send them through to South Africa.

Meanwhile, UAE have little to play for but pride after managing only one point from six games, leaving them rooted to the bottom of the group.

Despite watching his team go down 7-2 to Germany on Tuesday, coach Dominique Bathenay is confident that they can finish their disappointing campaign on a positive note.

"We have prepared for this match with a friendly against Germany and it was really good for us to play against a strong team," said the Frenchman.

"Losing by a big margin doesn't mean that we were bad and we benefited from this game.

"The game against Korea will be very hard because they are a strong team. But despite losing our chance to qualify for the World Cup, we still have something to give in the qualifiers.

"We will try our best to correct the mistakes that we made against Germany. We want to leave our mark in the qualifiers and hopefully we can do that on Saturday."