JEDDAH, 9 November 2006 — Saudi football is facing a critical era, as the performance of the players is no longer what it used to be.
Sadly, the country’s national pastime looks increasingly in decline.
Saudi Arabia savored moments of glory when the national football team with special needs (mentally disabled) succeeded in claiming the world championshp for the first time. The happiness, however, did not last long.
Months after the Kingdom national football team failed to advance past the group stage at the World Cup in Germany the national youth team were knocked out of the Asian Football Championship (AFC) Championship in India after losing to Japan 2-1 in the quarterfinal. The disappointment from the defeat deepened because of the fact that it robbed the youngsters of the chance to play at the FIFA World Cup Under-19 finals in Canada next year.
According to the AFC poll results on their website before the match, Saudi Arabia were one of the three teams favored to win the title. The online poll asked the fans to vote their favorite teams to win the AFC Youth Championship 2006. Saudi Arabia received 55,582 or 31.47 percent of the votes while Australia ranked first at 32.33 percent. Japan came in third at 18. 07 percent, Korea Republic 11.96 percent, the other teams 5.91 percent and India last at 1.16 percent.
According to sports daily Arriyadiyah the sportsmen they interviewed gave various reasons for the AFC Youth Championship failure.
Hassan Khalifa, Al-Ittihad goalkeeper, said the team performed very well but the absence of Motaz Moussa, who posseses abundant energy on the field, was partly to blame for the Japan defeat. He also said that the coach made a mistake when he opted for a lone striker on a 1-4-5 formation. By the time the coach realized his mistake and brought in a second striker in the second half, it was too late and this led to a draw for Saudis.
Shahin Al-Soaidan, Al-Itimad coach, offered another point of view. He said the weather played a big role in the weak performance of the team. He said the heavy rains made the ground very wet and that Saudi players are not used to play on such wet grounds.
National coach Khalid Al-Hawwar explained this failure was expected because the Japanese had long been preparing for these matches while “most of our youth players started playing two years ago only.”
“This hopefully would be taken care of because now clubs started to build new academies at their clubs to discover new talents. It is going to help our youths a lot and we will have a new generation that can play good and entertaining football,” he said.
Another reason, according to Damk club coach Musaed Saad, was the absence of many talented youth players who could have performed better. Meantime, the International Federation of Football History & Statistics showed a sharp decline of all Saudi clubs in the world rankings. Before 2005 seven Saudi clubs made the list. Now only three remained and even those three are on the bottom of the list. Al-Ittihad dropped down in the rankings from 224 to 285, Al-Hilal from 270 to 280 and Al-Shabab from 330 to 337 out of the 350 clubs in the world rankings.
