RIYADH: “When is there going to be a Saudi player that thrives and breaks the goalscoring ceilings that all these kids in this country can attach themselves to?”

That was the question on the mind of Allan Russell, a former professional and world-leading attacking coach who now leads the Superior Striker program. With the likes of Jamie Vardy, Raheem Sterling, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Harry Kane among his alumni, Russell’s Superior Striker has begun its journey to Saudi Arabia.

“The Superior Striker program is a method developed purely to increase the ratio of goalscorers,” Russell told Arab News. “Every single detail, we analyze. To recognize the patterns, the behaviors, the brand, the methods.

“We combine that with mindset and psychology — and that in turn develops the on-field program players need to properly develop as strikers,” he added.

Russell founded the program after a playing career across the Scottish and English football leagues, followed by almost five years as an attacking coach with the England national team. He went on to work for Aberdeen as an assistant and Norwich City as a set-piece coach.

In partnership with the Khobar-based Shoaibi Group, Russell’s Superior Striker program aims to transform football in Saudi Arabia, aligning with Vision 2030 principles around youth empowerment, sports tourism and national capacity building.

After a World Cup in which Saudi Arabia struggled in front of goal — netting just once across three games — conversation in Saudi football circles has intensified around the striker problem.

The last time a Saudi player won the Saudi Pro League Golden Boot was in 2014, when Nasser Al-Shamrani scored 21 goals for Al-Hilal. Since Mohammed Al-Sahlawi’s second-place finish the following season — also with 21 goals — no Saudi player has ever scored 20 or more goals in a single season.

In 2020, 2021 and 2026, no Saudi players featured among the top 10 scorers in the league — the only two to break into it in that time were Firas Al-Buraikan and Salem Al-Dawsari.

Yet Al-Buraikan’s struggles have deepened since joining Al-Ahli. At Al-Fateh, he finished fourth in the Golden Boot rankings with 17 goals in 2023 before earning a move to the eventual AFC Champions League Elite winners.

Since then, Al-Buraikan’s goalscoring rate has dropped by nearly 56 percent. At Al-Fateh, he scored 33 goals in 65 games — yet could not reach the same tally in 138 games at Al-Ahli, scoring just 31. His move to the left wing to accommodate Ivan Toney has not done him any favors.

The 27th Gulf Cup did see Al-Buraikan return to scoring form with a brace against Oman after a 10-game drought spanning almost a year. But Russell believes the positional shift does indeed affect his instincts.

“What happens when a player like him gets moved to the wing is that the number of critical chances he gets changes. The number of opportunities that equate to high-quality chances changes. The neural pathways don’t fire as they did when he was a striker, so these habits that developed in the brain start to dilute and become less impactful on his game,” he explained.

“When he goes back to playing as a number 9, suddenly, it is expected that when the ball drops everything is going to click around him and he will score goals consistently. It just doesn’t happen.”

There might be an alternate solution to Saudi players being shifted to other positions in the presence of the world’s best strikers at the big clubs — but ultimately, Russell believes playing in position is what matters most.

“If he plays as a winger, he can still get his repetition as a number 9 in training from Monday to Friday so that the pathways are still being stimulated,” Russell explained. “But the reality is — if you want to be a number 9, you have to play as a number 9.

“If you have to drop down to a lower club to do it, so be it.”

Russell believes Saudi Arabia is a market that possesses all the attributes for stellar growth over the coming decade — but that brings a need for greater emphasis on specialized coaching.

“You have top players coming here — there’s a buzz around the league, there’s excitement,” he said. “But what is missing in the Saudi market is a center forward who can come through the ranks, step into the first team — and not just survive — but thrive in that environment.”

But preparing a goalscorer is no easy task.

“It is not one or two things that make a goalscorer — it is a series of things; a program, a structure,” Russell explained. “You have to combine the data, the psychology and the mindset to build a program for that player.

“What this program develops are the neural pathways that ultimately allow the player to thrive and perform under pressure. If those pathways are not trained with the proper intensity, you’re never going to produce a top striker,” he added.

Superior Striker arrives in Saudi Arabia at a critical moment — only eight years remain until the 2034 FIFA World Cup. Even in some of Saudi Arabia’s best performances, the cry for a striker has always been loud.

“I would like Superior Striker to influence the current crop of Saudi players in the first teams and improve them,” Russell said. “But I would also like to be doing enough on the academy side to influence the development of younger players and set them on a pathway to break into the first team.

“I think if we increase the ratio of young Saudi players breaking through into the first team — players who feel a sense of belonging there, and whose success in turn inspires other young players — and all of a sudden there’s a national belief in the academy system — that would be a tremendous achievement,” he said.