U-23 footballers steal seniors’ spotlight in Saudi double-header

It is not often that Saudi Arabia’s senior side are in action on the same day as the country’s under-23 team, and it is even rarer that the latter clash seems more important.

While Thursday’s friendly with Venezuela in Spain is important for the Green Falcons’ World Cup preparations, the more immediate focus is on whether the youngsters can get the point against the UAE that is needed to guarantee a quarterfinal place at the AFC U23 Asian Cup.

Under Saad Al-Shehri, Saudi Arabia’s young footballers have taken four points from the first two games of Group D, which is currently taking place in Uzbekistan.

It started with an emphatic 5-0 win over Tajikistan. The Central Asians may have been playing a first ever game in the tournament but are no pushovers. It was an impressive performance from the victors with five different scorers. The next game was a 0-0 draw with Japan, a rival for the title. With the Samurai Blue reduced to 10 men in the second half, there was a little disappointment that there wasn’t a second successive Saudi win but a point was acceptable — after all, the East Asians had the better chances when it was 11 vs 11.

Assuming that Japan avoid defeat against Tajikistan in the other group game, and it would be a major surprise if they do not, then a draw will be enough for Saudi Arabia. Regardless, coach Al-Shehri wants more from his players against the UAE.

“I think they have more quality and can certainly play better than what we saw against Japan,” he said. “But this is normal as we were playing against a good team, who made it a little harder for us to play our normal game. We must play 100 percent from the first minute but that did not happen against Japan. More importantly, we also did not concede