Hi, does anybody have coverage of the two World Cup qualifying matches between these two in 1981? Cheers.
I think Majed Abdullah scored a really beautiful goal in one of the games. I never had the match, but I had one of Majed Abdullah's goals compilation, and it had the goal in there.
Ah, I remember that game, I think it ended 5-1 for Saudi, Majed Abdullah indeed scored a classic goal, dancing away 4-5 defenders. I hope someone posts some clips here, but if not, I will be back in Saudi in september and am sure I can get the entire game on video and edit/post some clips.
Actually we tied them 2-2 in NZ. We played well in that match and deserved better, but we lost both games home and away to Kuwait and China, so the match against NZ in Riyadh was meaningless for us. The final stage of the WCQ for Asia was a group of four, which Kuwait ended up on top. The second spot was to be contested between NZ and China. NZ needed to beat us by a margin of more than 5 goals to reach the WC ahead of China. Anything else would mean china qualifies. Strangely the match ended exactly 5-0 for NZ all scored in the 1st half. That meant that a playoff match was necessary between NZ and China.
Actually it was pretty fishy, but that was 26 years ago. NZ wasn't the kind of team that can score 5 goals. they did however defeat china in the playoff match, so I guess they deserved to qualify.
Hmm. We could be talking about different games. I think the game where Majed scored "that" goal ended with 5 goals for us, and I'm pretty sure it was played in NZ, although I'm not sure if it was official or a friendly, I was pretty young then
28.11.1981 New Zealand 2 - 2 Saudi Arabia 30.11.1981 Kuwait 1 - 0 China 07.12.1981 Kuwait 2 - 0 Saudi Arabia 14.12.1981 Kuwait 2 - 2 New Zealand 19.12.1981 Saudi Arabia 0 - 5 New Zealand TEAM P W D L F A GD PTS 1 * KUWAIT 6 4 1 1 8 6 +2 9 2 - New Zealand 6 2 3 1 11 6 +5 7 3 - China 6 3 1 2 9 4 +5 7 4 Saudi Arabia 6 0 1 5 4 16 -12 1 Weird, we tied in NZ, but lost 5-0 in Saudi Arabia. http://www.phespirit.info/worldcup/wcq1982e.htm
Hey mate, If you do get copies of the matches that would be great!! Would you be able to send copies my way? Ill pay obviously. Any matches from that series would be fantastic to get my hands on!! About Saudi throwing the game Im not so sure... why would they conceed all 5 in the first half?? Apparently Saudi hit the bar in 2nd half which would have ended the dream for NZ had it gone in. However the referee was paid off by Kuwait for their match in NZ... dodgy penalties... keeper saved first one so he gave another 5 mins later!!
Gladly! What matches do you want exactly? There's this video store in my 'hood that keeps an archive of all Saudi games on VHS. Its been years since I've been there so I'm not sure of the quality, but I'm sure I can get my hands on them, plus I also have a large old collection in my dusty storage room in Jeddah I wish we had a wiki-youtube style website archiving every single Saudi league/NT games and goals ever recorded, but we don't, so if anyone wants to start a project of that nature, please let me know!
That's awesome! I am trying to locate old New Zealand games... even our national broadcaster does not store them... useless!! So, the two NZ v Saudi games from that qualifying series would be great thanks!!