Bahrain against Saudi Arabia for the three points

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain will meet at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday at Abdullah Al-Khalifa Stadium in their second appearance in Gulf 24, with the aim of winning and rectifying the situation before going into the closing round.

A match that many see as a bottleneck for French coach Hervé Renard in this tournament as the loss could make him pack his bags early and return to Riyadh, while the size of the pressure on the Bahraini team is less considering the point they got from the game with Oman in the first round.

Saudi Arabia will play this match with better circumstances than Kuwait considering the readiness of all 23 players in the list after Renard removed the most important players representing Al-Hilal because of their late return, so the fans are waiting for another face of Saudi football.

Renard confirmed in the match press conference that he will enter with seven new players in the squad compared to the Kuwait match. These names are expected to be Nawaf Al Abed, Salman Al Faraj, Abdullah Atif, Yasser Al Shahrani, Salem Al Dosari, Hattan Bahabri and Mohammed Kanoo.

“We lost the first game so we face the wall,” he said. “We need to win if we want to qualify. Those are three compulsory points. It is all important and everyone is ready for the challenge.”

“Everybody knows how difficult the preparations were for this tournament, especially since most of the players participated ahead of the tournament in the league and the Champions League. I am sure that the team will be better against Bahrain. We must focus.”

On the other hand, some believe that the Bahraini team is in a better position after its draw against the defending champions, Oman. The Portugal coach Hélio Sousa confirmed that he is looking to win against Saudi Arabia, where he said: “What we have achieved against the Omani team is not bad, but we failed to score, especially in the last quarter of an hour of the match, but I am very happy with the performance that the players have made with Saudi Arabia. We want the three points and we will work to achieve them”.

As for the impact of Saudi Arabia’s defeat against Kuwait, he continued: “It is difficult to face Saudi Arabia, where they are considered one of the oldest and strongest teams in the region, we have to be aware of their potential”.

Bahrain relies heavily on the strength and toughness of its defense in the face of the expected Saudi flood, a system on which Sousa worked very much on in the Arab Asian Championship and also the Asian double qualifiers for the World Cup 2022 and Asian Nations 2023.

The two teams met 17 times in the Gulf Championships. The Green Falcons excelled on nine occasions against four for Bahrain Red, with four ending with a draw. The Green attack scored 29 goals against 18 for the Red.