Damn i typed a long message but got deleted! Neways 1) Looks like he has bad relationship with the princes according to some Saudi posters. 2) Yaser al Kahtani scores against major competition as well. He scored against Ghana in a friendly in 2005. He scored against the Southkoreans in World cup 2006 qualifiers. He scored in almost every match of Asian cup 2007. against South Korea (first match) against Thailand (2nd match) Bahrain (don't think he played) (Third match) against Uzbekistan (Quarter finals) against Japan (Semifinals)
Dude. What ... on ... earth ... are you talking about??? Name one national team game in HISTORY that conflicted with an ACL game? There aren't any! Why do you think this issue rarely comes up outside of Saudi Arabia? The ACL games conflict with the useless TRAINING CAMPS. In 2006, the NT pulled around 8 Hilali players just before a crucial ACL game in mid APRIL even though the World Cup was in JUNE. Yakhi you don't like our players give them back to us! 3ajeeb wallah! You think we like having half our team taken to these useless training camps?!
One of the top princes in the FA has a serious grudge against Noor. Shamrani was booted out by the administrators of the NT (or maybe the coach himself) for "disciplinary" reasons (some say he was "disrespectful" of the coaching staff or something silly like that). Well more like 44 in 56, but yes it's a great scoring rate. He actually has a very similar rate with Al-Hilal (something like 30 goals in 40 games approximately), even though Hilal's 4-5-1 gameplan doesn't serve him well. I have the details but they're in Arabic unfortunately. He has one hatrick only (against India in a qualifier). He's scored against a lot of weak teams for sure (the hattrick against India, goals against Bhutan, Singapore, and Luxembourg), but he's scored against good teams too (Russia, Morocco, 2 goals against Ghana). With Hilal he scored against Valencia and Man Utd (ok they were testimonials but Valencia in particular were trying to do a decent job at defending). He also scored in every game but the final in the last Asian Cup, including against Japan. He scored against S. Korea in the '06 qualifiers and also set up the first goal (I think he was the man of the match that day). And of course, he scored on his World Cup debut against Tunisia, and it was not an easy goal. The thing with Yasser is that he rarely needs more than one or two good chances in a game to score, even when he's not fully fit, and he can actually do a good job as a support striker too when he's fully fit. Here's the goal he set up for Kariri Here's the penalty that he caused in that match First goal against Ghana Second goal against Ghana He hasn't really had the opportunity to play against the world's top teams like his predecessors in the NT did. He never played against Brazil, Argentina, France, Holland, Portugal, England etc., but he has played against Sweden and Czech Republic. He was on the bench for the WC game against Spain. Anyway, I think Yasser's best days were 2005-07. He seems to be morphing into more of a goal-poacher. I doubt he'll ever be back to the same level, but I hope I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure he's had more than just 8 caps, but he was a late bloomer because he was with a provincial club for a long time like burning_phoenix said.
That's the thing. They had a two-week training camp. Couldn't he tell if the guy was fit or not from all the training sessions? I understand not starting with him, but why did he wait til the 80th minute? It was obvious from the beginning that Al-Sultan was not going to do anything in this match. Ugh I hope I don't see Al-Sultan play in the NT again.
If you think training camps are useless then I don't know what to say. Should we start preparing for the world cup a week before it starts? Considering people were blaming lack of preparation on the debacle that was the 2002 WC campaign I don't know what you want for these people. I've heard all sorts of weird things. Hilalis say the FA is trying to sabotage their team. Non-Hilalis say that the Hilalis are in control of the FA to get thier players in the NT. lolol only in Saudi Arabia.
Guys cut the crap and focus on the upcoming matches for Saudi Arabia. KSA plays 3 AWAY MATCHES, all against big teams KSA plays only 2 MATCHES at home. So, what the shit the FA is thinking of now??? Arrange at least 8 to 9 friendlies as the two matches upnext are all AWAY MATCHES and specially one against IRAN in TEHRAN, so what are we looking at????? North Korea is also a difficult team that South Korea have found impossible to beat so, IT'S NOW OR NEVER .... DO OR DIE FOR KSA.
Calm the f*** down man. In situations like these, panicking is an almost surefire way to fail miserably. Have faith in the boys when Malek, Yasser and Saad come back to full fitness (and hopefully Noor is back marshalling midfield) we still have a good chance. You make it sound like we've never won an away game in our lives and Korea and Iran will win 100% of their upcoming matches.
8 to 9 friendly matches? You're insane. Don't worry there's a Gulf Cup around the corner. I think we'll probably finish 3rd. 3 points against UAE, 4 points against North Korea, and 1 point from either Iran or South Korea. That seems very doable, and would give us 12 points. If we can manage that, then I doubt NK can get more than 7 points max, which would give them 11 points, and that's like worse case scenario.
Pshhhh man, you are too negative and full of it. As far as Im concerned, even South Korea is not guaranteed a spot yet...only 3 matches played, stop being so damn dramatic.
Thanks Sayf, Sah and burning_phoneix for the wonderful responses. Yasser's second goal against Ghana was just pure class.
Korea showed lots of problems in Ryadh. Korea should be well prepared to beat the crap out of Saudi Arabia without any dirty spots.