Wow. I don't know much soccer, but Argentina is one of the favorites to win the World Cup while Saudi Arabia ranked #51 in the world.
Here are the highlights - Argentina had three goals disallowed in the first half. Two were definitely for offsides, not sure of the other. Below the highlights a link to an interesting article in the WSJ on the Saudi French coach.
Weeks before sending the Saudi Arabia national team off to the World Cup, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman summoned the players and staff for a meeting. He wanted to look them in the eye before they became his soccer envoys to Qatar.
His message was clear: Just do your best.
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“He didn’t put any pressure on us,” Saudi manager Hervé Renard said here. “This is the way you have to work in football. When you put too much pressure, it isn’t always working all the time.”
Except this time, it worked. In one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history, Saudi Arabia—ranked No. 51 in the world—took down two-time champion Argentina 2-1 on Tuesday. The result immediately joined the list of all-time stunners, alongside Senegal upsetting defending champion France in 2002, North Korea beating Italy in 1966, the U.S. taking down England in 1950 and Cameroon shocking Argentina in 1990.
According to data analysts Nielsen Gracenote, it ranks as the World Cup’s most unlikely result of all time, with just an 8.7% chance before kickoff.
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Saudi hardly expected that kind of impact from its national soccer team. In six appearances at the World Cup, it has only survived the group stage once, in 1994, when it lost in the round of 16. A similar result this time, in a group featuring Argentina, Mexico, and Poland seemed about as realistic as a snowman in the desert. Not one member of the Saudi squad plays his club soccer outside the country and the team won just four of its 11 games this year before the World Cup.
By November, however, Renard had transformed the Falcons, as the team is known, into a well-drilled side that seized its limited opportunities, rode its luck, and bent without breaking for the last half-hour of the game. Saudi Arabia’s solidity came as no surprise to his longtime friend and French countryman, the former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.
“They were physically superior, well organized, and mentally prepared,” Wenger said in a text message.
After the game, Renard was the first to remind his squad that once their 20-minute celebration was over, they still had everything to achieve at this tournament. The Saudis weren’t out of the group stage yet, nor should they get carried away. “Relax,” Renard said he told the team. “You are from Saudi. Do you know the first quality of the Saudi player? When they are winning, they are flying.”
“You think you are one of the best teams in the world?” he added. “Keep your [feet] on the ground.”
But once Renard left the locker room, he could begin to appreciate what he had just pulled off. His team from a soccer backwater in the desert had gone a long way to eliminating Messi, one of the greatest players of all time, from the final World Cup of his career. The Kingdom even declared Wednesday a national holiday.
Nice recap Tom. Sports are more interesting when the underdog wins.
Posted by: Kathy Americo | Thursday, November 24, 2022 at 04:46 AM