For one month, late-night matches, penalty shootouts and conversations about football shaped the daily routines of fans across the UAE. Then, almost overnight, the tournament was over.
For Marwan Sharif, a Sudanese resident of Dubai, waking up without another match to anticipate felt strangely familiar, yet no less difficult.
“It always starts as entertainment, something fun to watch after work,” he said. “But somewhere around the knockout stage, it stops being a tournament and becomes something you are actually emotionally tied to.
His days began revolving around results, kick-off times and the need to recover from late-night matches.
“I was checking the late-game scores before I got out of bed, rearranging my day and naps around kick-off times,.
