The United Arab Emirates begin their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign with a home clash against Nepal in Dubai on Thursday.

This week represents the final set of fixtures for Paulo Bento's side before the Asian Cup gets underway in January.

Match preview

Having led Portugal to two major tournaments and South Korea to the last 16 in Qatar, Bento is back on the international scene now with the UAE, becoming the next high-profile name to manage them after the likes of Bert van Marwijk, Dick Advocaat, Roy Hodgson, Carlos Queiroz, Valery Lobanovskyi, Don Revie and Brazilian World Cup winners Carlos Alberto Parreira and Mario Zagallo.

Bento will be looking to emulate Zagallo, who took UAE to their only previous World Cup when they reached Italia 90 but lost all three group matches.

While not quite having reached the same level as any of those managers in his past adventures, Bento has made a fantastic start with the national side, winning all three friendlies since taking over.

The most notable was his first - a 4-1 win over Costa Rica in neutral Zagreb - before returning home to beat Kuwait and Lebanon last month.

There should be no difficulty adjusting to competitive action, as the UAE are huge favourites to progress past the second stage along with Bahrain in a group which will see the top two move on to the next round.

The World Cup's expansion to 48 teams will benefit teams like the UAE more than almost any other nation across the globe, as AFC have seen their allocation of teams rise from four to eight, with the potential of another in an inter-confederation playoff.

AFC have completely revamped the qualification system from Qatar, but UAE were technically the sixth-best team in Asia in qualifying for 2022, as they lost in a playoff to Australia, who then went into the inter-confederation playoff.

A repeat of that performance this time around will see the UAE qualify automatically, but nations such as Syria, Iraq, Qatar, China, Uzbekistan and Oman will have similar ambitions to take advantage of the additional spots.

Is it extremely unlikely Nepal will make it any further after they surprised Laos in the first stage to make it this far.

Manish Dangi's solitary goal in the second leg in the Laos capital Vientiane earned them just a seventh World Cup qualifying win in their history last month.

Nepal have dropped down the rankings since they were given a bye into this stage for the 2022 qualifiers, where they beat Chinese Taipei twice, but lost all other six matches.

Those two victories, along with two against Timor-Leste in 2014 qualifying and two versus Macau in 2002 qualifying, remain the country's only ever wins at this level.

Vincenzo Annese's side have been in good form recently, as the 13 games since their exit from Asian Cup qualifying have seen them win six and draw a further three - including victory over Pakistan in the South Asian Championship during the summer.

Nepal are well out of their depth here though, and will likely only play for pride in their group games against fellow minnows Yemen, as UAE and Bahrain are heavily fancied to run away with progression.