The Asian Football Confederation has apologised to the United Arab Emirates for using an inaccurate nickname taken from Wikipedia on its official website.

The UAE’s team were nicknamed the ‘Sand Monkeys’ by the AFC after the moniker was copied blindly from a hacked Wikipedia page.

The apology reads: “The AFC apologises for an editorial mistake in which the UAE National Team was inadvertently referred to by an inaccurate nickname on the AFC’s official website www.the-afc.com in the article ‘UAE to take cautious approach’ dated 12 October 2012.

“The error, which was mainly because of referral to a popular web-based encyclopedia by the concerned Editor, was corrected immediately after it was noticed.

“The AFC would like to apologise for any hurt this might have caused to the UAE Football Association and UAE football fans.”

Offensive as it might be, it could liven things up if journalists were obliged to refer to teams by their nicknames according to Wikipedia at the time of writing.