Uzbekistan players received 18 yellow cards in the tournament while goalkeeper Doniyorjon Usmonov was the only player to be sent off when he was shown the red card in their semi-final clash with China.

"Winning the Fair play award is good but it would have been better to win the title," said Uzbekistan coach Akhmad Ubaydullaev.

"We were hoping to win tonight but it wasn’t our day and I want to congratulate UAE for their performance.

"We have done great work in the competition as we reached to the final and that was our main target. We take heart from our good displays and that was the main reason for the success that we had.

"We had a lot of difficult work as the players put in a big effort and we managed to get into the final. All the technical staff and the players worked as one unit and we at least deserved to be here."

Ubaydullaev believes his side should have received even less yellow cards than they did with five of their 18 coming in the Group D match against Jordan.

"The spirit of the team was great and they haven’t thought about getting yellow or red cards," he added.

"They only thought of producing a good performance and giving a good show.

"We had a high number of yellow cards mainly because we received five of them in our first game against Jordan. It was mainly the fault of the referee who didn’t have a good performance to the extent that he even booked our injured players."