5 things we learned from Saudi’s 1-0 win over Iceland in Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI: Saudi Arabia defeated Iceland 1-0 on Sunday in the latest World Cup warm-up for Herve Renard’s men with Saud Abdulhamid scoring the only goal of the game after 25 minutes. Here are five things we learned from the action in Abu Dhabi.

The captain’s fitness is worrying

Salman Al-Faraj is not only the captain and leader of the team but a calming and composed presence in midfield. He makes the team tick. Coach Renard last week compared him to Thiago Motta, the former Barcelona, Inter and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder who started his career playing for Brazil and then became an Italian international. It was quite the compliment but the problem is that Al-Faraj has been struggling for fitness all season. He has only played 179 minutes of league football this season for Al-Hilal and it has been a real stop start campaign.

He has missed the majority of the preparation games since qualification for the World Cup and then didn’t even last the first half against Iceland as he collected a shoulder injury after falling awkwardly. It doesn’t seem that this particular knock is especially serious but there is no doubt that the 33 year-old has been struggling and Renard will know that he may need a Plan B.

Widespread experimentation is over

It was not a full strength Iceland team but there was still some talent there and we will get a  good idea of how strong they are when they face South Korea at the end of the week. This, however,  was a solid performance from Saudi Arabia and it is clear that after the many changes and substitutions from the previous friendly games, this is looking more like the full-strength team that will take the field in Qatar as most of the big names were present..

The midfield looked similar