BERLIN, 8 June 2006 — Team officials from Asian giants Saudi Arabia said there was nothing to worry about yesterday despite their World Cup squad being ravaged by injury and which has seen nine of them miss training in recent days.
The latest to fall victim to the curse is veteran striker Sami Al-Jaber, who suffered a right foot injury, though a team doctor told AFP it was not serious. However, with a week to go to their Group H opener against Tunisia — only the second all-Arab match in World Cup finals history following that of Saudi Arabia and Morocco in 1994 which the Saudis won 2-1 — they face a race against time to have them all fit.
While that has forced their Brazilian coach Marcos Paqueta to rearrange his strategy in training drastically, team officials insisted the show must go on.
“None of these cases can influence our strategy,” one of the officials said.
“The medical staff is following each case individually so they can get all the players ready for the first match.” Paqueta, who landed a world Under-17 and Under-20 Cup with Brazil, went so far as to hold a training session behind closed doors with only the team manager of the Saudis allowed to watch with other officials barred.
However despite this midfielder Omar Al-Ghamdi remained buoyant that the Saudis would do themselves justice this time and not as in 2002 where they were outclassed — including an 8-0 drubbing by Germany — and went home after the first round.
“Our team is better than the one who played in Japan,” said El-Ghamedi, who has played in the last four matches for the ‘Sons of the Desert’.
“We are better because we have prepared well both technically and physically and played some tough matches (including a 1-0 defeat by 2002 semi-finalists Turkey) and had enough time to be ready.
“In 2002 the case was not the same because we didn’t play such strong matches to test ourselves.” Al-Ghamdi insisted that the preparations had got them ready for the clash with the 2004 African Nations Cup champions Tunisia in Munich.
“I think after our campaign in the Netherlands and Germany we feel relaxed and ready.
“Especially for our first match against Tunisia.”
