World Cup 06: Saudi Arabia

In this series of posts we shall look at each country’s current squad who will most likely see action during the games itself. We continue with Saudi Arabia (country profile). The full archive is found here.

Projected Lineup: Mabrouk Zaid, Sami al-Jaber, Yasser al-Qahtani, Taiseer al-Jassam, Hamad al-Montashari, Redha Fallatha, Ahmed al-Bahri, Saud al-Khariri, Mohammad Noor, Nawaf al-Temyat, Mohammad al-Shalhoub
Other Players: Muhammad Al Dayea, Mustafa Maleaka, Yasser Al Mussailim, Ahmed Bahry Reda Tukr, Sulaiman Amido, Ahmed Dhoki, Kamil Mousa, Muhammad Massad, Khalid Aziz, Omar Al Ghamd, Abdu Aziz Khatran, Muhammad Anbar, Muhammad Ameen, Saad Al Harthi, Saleh Bashir
A massive cash fund and growing popularity and support by the government, Saudi Arabia should fair pretty well compare to their last three World Cup appearances. Their performance in ‘94 world cup having reached the second round prompted Saudi to support the sport hoping they could make it big in international tournaments. But for the past decade they have been more of a disappointed than inspiration.

All of these may change in World Cup 2006 given their performance in qualifying for the competition — going undefeated through 12 qualifiers.
Saudi Arabia can look forward to a promising World Cup appearance because of the triple threat combination of veteran Al Jaber, Arabia’s highest paid player Yasser Al Qahtani and Asia’s number 1 goal keeper Mabrouk Zaid.

Watch out for Saudi Arabia. Their triple threat could prove fatal. You can see in this chart the list of teams and groups they belong to

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