Many of you realized that I dissappeared during the World Cup. To stop you from speculating of my whereabout, let me tell you the real story. On June 10th I flew back to States and moved into a friends apartment for the summer, which has no internet connection. With an internship and trying to settle down, I didn’t have time to blog or even try to get internet at my apartment. I successfuly got my Internet on June 30th, and by then it was too late for any Saudi blogging.

The Saudi team in this World Cup gave two extreme impressions to viewers. But overall, they have done a good job. The success story of this World Cup is that Saudi players will be slowly moving outside to play in Europe. Ahmed Al Sewalih, who wasn’t in the World Cup, has completed paper work in moving to Salzburg of Austria. At the same time, there are news that European clubs are trying to get in hold of Yasser Al Qahtani. To me Saudi Arabia will come back to their fifth World Cup in South Africa with a much confident team, as all the young players of this year will be the bright stars of 2010.

I like to thank you few people for their consistent contribution to this blog: Saeed, Shahab Ali, Moe, Explorer, Naveed, and anyone I forgot!

Farewell folks. If you ever want to talk about the Saudi team, shoot me an e-mail at shahed1984@gmail.com. Or if you around in the states ( virginia, maryland or dc), you can call me at 434.409.1223.

The game will be one of the most tensed games in the tournament. Both teams believe that it’s the door to the second round. With both side knowing Arabic, we might have some foul words flying around during the game. I hope the Saudi players don’t start getting mad during the game, as we don’t lost players through red card. I hope the best for out team. Let the hawk be unstoppable.

Folks, I am flying back to America tonight and hopefully would need sometime to settle down. I want you all to present your thoughts, predictions, fears, complaints, suggestions and anything else on this post as a comment. You will hear more from me soon.

With this game, the Saudi Arabia has ended their training satisfactorily with two convincing victory.

Hopefully with good performance, these talented Saudi players will open the door for more Saudis to go abroad.

Let me assure the Saudi lovers and haters, the team is clearly not the same team that lost against Germany 8-0.

It’s a team that:

• has found the perfect players after months of preparations.
• came with the perfect formation and start-ups for the coming World Cup 2006 games.
• is coached by our experienced coach Marcos Paqueta.
• hopes to carry forward the underdog spirit similar to South Korea’s underdog spirit in Korea/Japan 2002.
• went through the most number of friendly games before this World Cup.
• has the Asian 2005 player and defender Hamad Al Montashiri, who wasn’t present in 2002 to protect the Saudi net from Germans.
• fears nothing after winning twice against the fourth place winner of Korea/Japan 2002.
• gained confidence and wiped away the “sudden” anxiety during games against European teams.
• has the best ever mid-fielders the team have ever seen – Shalhoub, Temyat, Noor, Aziz, Kharir, Ghamdi, Ameen
• has the most capped player Al Daeyea, for his success and failure experiences is the most valuable asset for the team
• has players such Saudi Ronaldhino (Anbar), Saudi Maradona (Shalhoub), and Saudi Raul (Al Harthi)

and many more……go ahead and write if you think of a new one.