Saudi Arabia: The Kings of Asian Football

At 22:55 on the evening of June 8, ecstatic joy reigned in Saudi Arabia. A total of 67,000 fans in the King Fahd Stadium, and hundreds of thousands in the streets of the metropolis Riyadh celebrated exuberantly the fourth successive qualification by their national football team for World Cup finals. Saudi Arabia had just scored a clear 3-0 victory over Uzbekistan to ensure the trip to Germany.

Here you can find information about the star of the team ...

Although Iran, Japan and South Korea hold better positions in the World rankings than Saudi Arabia, the current masters of Asian football are the players of the football-crazy kingdom on the Arabian peninsula, an area six times as big as Germany but with just 26 million inhabitants. With impressive ease the “Greens” made their way without effort through the Asian qualification, remaining undefeated, winning 10 of their 12 matches, and recording a goal tally of 24-2.

The history of Saudi Arabian football is not very old, however. The national association was only founded in 1959. Football was strictly forbidden in the “Holy Land of Islam” until 1951. But even after that there was little progress. For three decades, the most popular sport in the world eked out a miserable existence, rating in popularity far behind the national sport, camel racing.

This only changed, when King Fahd decided at the end of the 1980s to show the world his enthusiasm for football. He built the incredibly magnificent national stadium in the capital Riyadh and hosted a tournament to which he invited teams from all continents. The “King Fahd Cup” was held for the first time in October 1992, and today has become the FIFA Confederations Cup.

It proved a prestigious gesture, but the ambitious head of state was not totally content. Visible successes by the national team were missing. Though the Saudi national team had won the 1984 and 1988 Asian championship (and again for the third time in 1996), Saudi Arabian football was comparatively unimportant in the world.

In 1994, the hiring of a foreign coach finally paid off. Argentine Jorge Solari led Saudi Arabia into the World Cup finals for the first time. The team made headlines in the USA, by upsetting Morocco (2-1) and Belgium (1-0) in the first round, and then losing to Sweden 3-1 in the knock-out stage.

Four years later in France they did not fare so well. The first round was poor with the exception of a 2-2 draw with South Africa. In 2002 in Japan, the Saudis met Germany, among others in Group E, and suffered their highest World Cup defeat, 8-0. At Sapporo, three goals by Miroslav Klose (among others) hailed the start of a series of unexpected results by the eventual World Cup runners-up. Saudi Arabia went home without a point or a goal from their third World Cup.

The President of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF), Prince Sultan Bin Fahad Bin Abddulaziz, has again placed his reliance on Argentinian football know-how for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Coach Gabriel Humberto Calderón, the 1990 World Cup runner-up in Italy as a player, is the new hope. But it cannot be certain that the 44-year-old has a safe job. In the past 11 years, Saudi Arabia has had 13 different national coaches, the most recent being Dutchman Gerard van der Lem, who was fired in 2004. He and his team were surprisingly eliminated in the preliminary round of the Asian Championship without a win.

Calderón may have justified his intention to sit on the coaching bench in Germany in 2006. “He has played a large part in the qualifying for the World Cup finals. He started the long road with us, and therefore he should have the right to be with us in Germany,” the SAFF President announced after their triumph in the qualification with the final 1-0 victory in South Korea.

The Argentine, Saudi Arabia’s national coach since November 2004, masterminded a popular tactical move that gained him great acclaim from the always extremely critical fans and media. In time for the decisive qualifying round at the beginning of 2005, he asked the national football hero Sami Al Jaber, who had sulked for three years without playing a single international match, to rejoin the team. The 32-year-old attacker of Al-Hilal, Saudi Arabia’s record international with 152 caps and top scorer with 42 goals, is the only player to participate in all three previous World Cup finals.

The captain rewarded the coach by scoring important goals. Together with Mohammad Al Shlhoub and Ibrahim Al Shahrani, Sami Al Jaber was the most successful goalscorer with three goals. Attacker Yasser Al-Qahtani, 22, is considered the most promising talent of the very young team. Calderón is hoping for more substance in the midfield by the comeback of midfield strategist Nawaf Al Temyat who was injured for a long time. The 29-year-old, a member of the World Cup squads in 1998 and 2002, did not earn a cap for two years.

Almost all “desert kickers” are totally unknown on the international stage. Legionnaires in foreign leagues are rare also. Al Jaber once tried to make a name for himself in the English League with Wolverhampton Wanderers, but failed disastrously. But the top players earn a lot at home. No wonder in a country where the dollar billions gush out of the earth in the form of oil.