What does Saudi Arabia have to do to produce a successful national team?

RIYADH
In hindsight, Saudi Arabia’s exit from the World Cup after a stalemate with Cape Verde does not look as bad as it did at the time. The Blue Sharks were one of two teams to put two goals past runners-up Argentina, and the only team in the tournament to avoid both losing and conceding a goal to the eventual champions, Spain.
But if that is what the Green Falcons were to take from the World Cup, it risks shifting focus away from the deeper underlying issues hindering Saudi football on the Road to 2034. In the 90 minutes against Cape Verde, all of Saudi Arabia’s problems were laid bare. Some pointed to the late appointment of Georgios Donis as head coach, with little time to install a clear identity before the tournament. Others pointed to the lack of playing time for domestic players. Neither fully explains the sheer lack of desire to win a game that needed to be won.
After all, Herve Renard walked into the 2022 World Cup with a full qualification cycle behind him and still saw Saudi Arabia eliminated in the group stage — suggesting the issue runs deeper than the timing of a coaching appointment. For a set of players brave enough to take on Messi and co, going on the back foot against a team making its debut — regardless of how good they turned out to be — represented poor progress over four years.
Of course, the team had seen changes since, with 10 players under the age of 27 making their World Cup squad debut in 2026 — most prominently the youngest of them all: Musab Al-Juwayr. Yet Al-Juwayr played an average of 82 minutes per game in the Saudi Pro League with Al-Qadsiah this season — more than every midfielder Saudi Arabia called up to the 2022 World Cup squad, including Salman Al-Faraj.
This challenges the notion that Saudi players are not getting enough game time in the league. Their youngest current midfielder averaged more minutes per game than any midfielder called up to the 2022 World Cup squad, in a league that has grown enormously in terms of quality over the last four years.
According to research by Australian journalist and “The Asian Game” podcast co-founder Paul Williams, the 26 players who represented Saudi Arabia in 2026 logged more total game time than the squad of 26 who went to Qatar. Between the two campaigns, combined minutes rose from 32,050 across a 30-game 2021/22 season to 42,283 across a 34-game 2025/26 season — a jump of nearly 32 percent, working out to 1,233 minutes per player in 2022 against 1,626 in 2026.
Individually, though, the picture was more mixed: players averaged closer to 62 minutes per appearance in 2026, down from nearly 70 in the previous cycle. The player who saw the largest dip between both squads was Firas Al-Buraikan. Prior to the 2022 World Cup, he averaged nearly 80 minutes a game as Al-Fateh’s starting striker.
At Al-Ahli last season, he played just 51 minutes per game, often playing second fiddle to Ivan Toney and frequently deployed on the left wing as a supporting player. For the national team’s leading striker, this is a damning statistic — and it is not helped by fellow strikers Saleh Al-Shehri and Abdullah Al-Hamddan, who averaged 23 and 13 minutes respectively.
Saudi Arabia cannot afford to have its best players sitting on the bench or shifted out of their strongest positions. The numbers bear it out: the Green Falcons scored just 17 goals in their last 19 competitive matches — a return that should worry anyone charting the Road to 2034.
With Al-Ittihad now pursuing Al-Ettifaq’s Khalid Al-Ghannam, it raises another question. Are players who perform well at mid-table clubs damaging their careers — and the fortunes of the Saudi national team — by moving to the big four? Murad Al-Hawsawi saw his minutes drop from 83 on average to just 33 when he made the midseason move from Al-Khaleej to Al-Hilal.
Faisal Al-Ghamdi went from averaging 83 minutes in the Belgian Pro League with Beerschot to just 25 with Al-Ittihad last season. Al-Ghannam himself played a total of 49 minutes for Al-Hilal two seasons ago, before accumulating 2,175 minutes for Al-Ettifaq in his breakout season this year.
The growth of the Saudi Pro League through the acquisition of foreign players is not the issue — on average, players are getting more game time in a higher-quality league. The issue is how individual, important players in the Saudi national team are making moves that cost them the minutes they need.