Saudis need Self-Esteem

How can a team, which lost to Germany by 8 goals, loose to a similar strength team like Cameroon by one goal? Both German and Cameroon team were skillfully alike. This is exactly what happened to the Saudi team at the 2002 World Cup. The world expected the worst performance from the Saudis against Cameroon. Instead, the players surprised viewers by showing superb football against a strong Cameroon team. The question many wonder is why the Saudi experienced such a disastrous defeat against Germany?

The answer is basic: the lack of self-esteem. In an interview after becoming Saudi coach, Paqueta indicated that his role in the coming months was to increase the self-esteem of the players. This is a coach that helped the Brazilian team to win U-17 and U-20 champions in 2003. In his expert view, he sees similarity between the Saudi player and Brazilian player. In my view, that is an exaggeration, but it has some truth to it. Many foreign coaches in Saudi agree that Saudi players can easily play in the European league.

The lack of self-esteem within the Saudi team is from few multiple factors. First, the whole national team is based of local players who have never played abroad. In addition, every time the team played abroad they experienced a cultural change. It is known that Saudi culture is contrary to many world cultures. Lastly, the players place too much fear of well-reputed teams.

Many observers in Saudi believe that the true test for Saudis is when they play in a foreign country in front of loud foreign fans. In the recent, LG Cup (for some reason its called Sky Com by Saudis and through FIFA called LG Cup) Saudis showed some satisfactory results. In the eyes of critics, the games don’t really count as successful for it lacked the atmosphere of a World Cup. Therefore people believe that the true test is when the Saudi play against Portugal on March 1st in Germany in a friendly game.

Big teams incite fear in the Saudi team. The Saudis find it really hard to overcome such fear. In my observation, the Saudis defend more against high ranked team than any other time. If they can play in attacking mode and score against team like Greece and Finland in Saudi, they are less likely to succeed in playing similar football on a foreign ground.

What happened in 2002 can be explained? The Saudis don’t fear the Cameroon as much as they fear German. The self-esteem kicked in during the Cameroon game but was no where during their first game sadly.

The only hope now is that the Saudi players have to work in the coming months to come out of their cage during the 2006 World Cup rather than being locked away in fear.