2026 World Cup Team Chronicle·Saudi Arabia: After the Shot That Pierced Argentina, the Green Shirt Must Stay Awake

Saudi football is often remembered through one sudden kick.

In 1994, in the United States, Saeed Al-Owairan began carrying from his own half. Belgian shirts came at him one by one and disappeared one by one. The footage gets older every year, but the run still feels quick. The green shirt breaks from near halfway, as if someone has cut the pitch on a diagonal.

That was the first time Saudi Arabia made the World Cup look seriously at it.

Then many years passed.

Sometimes they played well. Sometimes they were beaten very badly. The 0-8 against Germany in 2002 remains a hard stone many Saudi fans still have to walk around. World Cup memory is like that. It does not keep only the flattering photographs. It also stores the way you fell, then brings it out every few years.

In 2022, they gave the world another kick.

Lusail, Argentina. Messi scored from the spot in the first half and most people thought the script had already settled. Argentina would control, Saudi would run, Argentina would slowly win. Early in the second half, Saleh Al-Shehri equalized. Five minutes later, Salem Al-Dawsari received on the left side of the box, stopped, turned, and bent a right-footed shot toward the far corner.

The ball left his foot as Argentine defenders lunged and Emiliano Martinez opened his body.

It did not matter.

Goal.

Salem turned. Teammates swallowed him. For a moment, the green shirt looked like wind rising from the desert. Later we learned Argentina would still become champion. But their tournament began by being woken by Saudi Arabia.

That is the charm.

Saudi Arabia may not play three straight good matches.

But it has that one moment.

If it lands, even a giant pauses.

In 2026, the trouble is exactly there: is one moment enough?

I do not think so.

Saudi football has become hot in recent years. Big names in the league, money, night lights. But a national team is not made by stacking league business cards. The old World Cup questions remain: pressure on the back line, passing through midfield, the last action up front, and when the score goes wrong, keeping emotion from playing the first pass.

The group makes those questions even sharper: Spain, Uruguay, Cape Verde. Spain exposes every loose touch. Uruguay makes the game hurt in the ribs. Cape Verde are not tourists; they bring pace and nerve. If Saudi Arabia live only on the far-corner shot from 2022, they will be read quickly.

Herve Renard's return gives them a familiar fire.

He knows how this group can be lit. His halftime speech against Argentina became a little piece of football theatre: are you just taking pictures of Messi? Are you just standing there? It was not complicated. Sometimes a national team needs that more than another arrow on the tactical board. It needs cold water.

Salem Al-Dawsari is still the soul.

He is older now, but big matches are not only legs. When Salem receives the ball, he carries the calm of someone who has already done something impossible and knows it might not be impossible to do it again. Firas Al-Buraikan gives the team another need: a forward who can receive, hold, and pull a center-back away. Saudi Arabia cannot wait for a miracle from the wing every night.

Mohamed Kanno, Faisal Al-Ghamdi, Musab Al-Juwayr and others will decide whether the middle survives.

If Saudi Arabia cannot play out, they fall into two extremes: long balls thrown at luck, or back-line passes that make their own defenders nervous. The World Cup does not allow much time to reorganize. A touch is heavy and the press arrives. A back pass is slow and the striker is already on your shoulder.

The defense has the same old tension.

Hassan Tambakti, Abdulelah Al-Amri, Saud Abdulhamid and the others have seen big matches and made mistakes. Saudi Arabia can hold a line. The danger is that when they defend with too much excitement, space opens behind them. Against Argentina in 2022, the offside line was a wire pulled very tight. That day it did not snap, and everyone applauded. But this kind of wire only needs to break once.

In 2026, Saudi Arabia cannot live on excitement alone.

Excitement is the first breath.

A match lasts ninety minutes, sometimes a hundred. The first breath matters, but it cannot defend a 72nd-minute corner, cannot calm a center-back with a burning ball at his feet in the 84th.

My view: Saudi Arabia will produce one match people remember.

Maybe a win, maybe a draw with a favorite, maybe just another shot that makes people stand up. They have that ability. Their history likes to arrive that way: Al-Owairan, Salem, a green flash crossing a place the opponent thought was safe.

But to get out of the group, they need less romance.

That sounds strange, because their best World Cup moments are romantic. Yet qualification is built from unromantic things: the goalkeeper saving what he should, the midfielder fouling in the right place, the full-back being covered, the team not chasing another heroic goal just because it is ahead.

The green shirt has already proved it can hurt a world champion.

Now the harder question is whether, after hurting someone, it can stay awake for the rest of the tournament.

That is harder than one wonder goal.

And more like the World Cup.

2026 squad list by position

Note: projected from recent call-ups, qualifiers, and regular national-team use as of May 2026. The final 26-player squad depends on the official roster.

• Goalkeepers: Nawaf Al-Aqidi, Ahmed Al-Kassar, Mohammed Al-Owais, Abdulrahman Al-Sanbi
• Defenders: Hassan Tambakti, Abdulelah Al-Amri, Ali Lajami, Saud Abdulhamid, Muteb Al-Harbi, Hassan Kadesh
• Midfielders: Mohamed Kanno, Faisal Al-Ghamdi, Nasser Al-Dawsari, Ali Hassan, Musab Al-Juwayr, Ziyad Al-Johani
• Forwards: Salem Al-Dawsari, Firas Al-Buraikan, Saleh Al-Shehri, Abdullah Al-Hamdan, Ayman Yahya, Abdulrahman Al-Aboud

If you like reading the World Cup through roles and positions, play a round here: https://wordlecup.today/en/football/