Double whammy
Wednesday turned out to be a very bad day for Saudi football. Both teams that competed in the Crown Prince’s Cup final lost badly — Hilal in the Asian Champions League and Nassr in the Arab League. Losing was not the bigger deal, it is the way one team lost and the way the other handled the loss.
Hilal met Al-Ain from UAE and, sadly, our players began with bad losing spirit. As I mentioned before, I didn't expect much from the coach. He's good for a match or two but not for a long term engagement. Al-Ain did not simply win the match but rather dominated it from beginning to end. They could probably have made a bigger score but it seems like they played for fun which added insult to injury. Expectedly, Hilal's president is nowhere to be seen. Hiding away whenever his team loses.
As for Nassr, the team lost on the same day to Al-Arabi from Kuwait and got kicked out from the championship. Nassr made a name for themselves as they threw out a riot after the match. Nassr's players were out of control. Their captain Hussain Abdulghani, Saudi's football top trouble maker, hit Arabi's player who scored the second goal during his celebration of his goal and started to play brutally.
This was followed by Nassr's striker Saud Hamoud spitting on the same player just before the match ended. Right after the final whistle, the riot started clearly from Nassr's end and not from anyone else's. But the bigger question remains, how could Nassr get away from this violent misconduct? For decades, Nassr has been playing like a mama's boy of the Saudi Football Federation. After this recent outburst, the federation kept quiet except to thank Nassr for suspending Saud Hamoud for the next two matches when clearly, they need to step up and make players face the consequences of their actions.
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