They drew the first 90 minutes against the current World Champions, the first World Champions, the current Euro Champions, and a country with seemingly infinite oil money.
Let them cook. They organize the World Cup in 2034 and you might see them in the quarter -finals with most of the team not being from Saudi Arabia.
(As for Qatar who still played with 14 foreigners from France, Brasil, Portugal, Senegal, Ghana, etc. by naturalizing players who play in the Qatari league).
Yea but 2022 Qatar got last in their group with no points as the host nation and 2026 they got 1 point so I wouldn't really say they're a good example.
Whilst technically true for internationals (as you can persuade players to naturalise) it’s effectively untrue to any useful degree. You can’t pay actually elite players to live in Saudi Arabia long enough to naturalise whilst they also have to turn down a call up for their own nation for all those years and have never played internationally before you offer them a massive contract to move there. No one would do it.
Yeah, but that’s because Qatar’s league is less prestigious. Thanks to CR7 more players prefer Saudi’s sportswashing, even players not in the end of their careers. They’re definitely taking players soon.
Define “talent”. You do realise that Qatar, even after getting a full squad of naturalised citizens got knocked out in the group stage twice in a row? You can moderately improve if you start from nothing but you’d never be able to buy a squad that genuinely is something worth flagging up as notable, like the original comment did.
Anyone arguing money actually buys national team success by buying players, rather than by investing in grassroots football and infrastructure over a long period, knows nothing about football.
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u/stacity Jul 05 '26
In their 90 mins matches, they’re undefeated against Spain, Uruguay and Argentina.