Saudi Arabia and Poland.. Will the Falcons achieve revenge and qualify at the expense of the Eagles?
After Qatar bid farewell to the World Cup competitions after the second loss to Senegal 1/3, the Gulf lost one of the two participants in this first edition in the Middle East, and hope became pinned on the Green Falcons, who achieved the best start over the course of 6 participations in the World Cup.
After its historic victory over the Argentine national team at the start of its World Cup matches, Al-Akhdar Al-Saudi dreams of achieving a long-awaited achievement in the global wedding, by ascending to the elimination rounds for the second time in its history and the first in 28 years, as it was its only qualification to the round of 16 in the 1994 edition in the United States of America.
Tomorrow, the Falcons will enter a second confrontation of history against the White Eagles (Poland), led by the best Robert Lewandowski, in the second round of the third group of the group stage in the current edition of the World Cup, sitting at the top of the group standings with 3 points, after a historic 2/1 victory over the Argentine national team last Tuesday, in the opening round of the tournament, with goals from Saleh Al-Shehri and Salem Al-Dosari, the magician Lionel Messi advanced with a goal for the tango dancers from a penalty kick in the first half.
Al-Akhdar enters the match, two points ahead of its closest opponents Poland and Mexico, who tied without goals in the first round, while the Argentine national team languishes at the bottom of the standings without points, and Al-Akhdar, who is participating for the sixth time in the World Cup and the second in a row, needs to beat Poland, in order to officially qualify for the Round of 16, without looking at the results of its competitors, and without waiting for the outcome of its final group stage match against Mexico next Wednesday.
Al-Akhdar will seek to achieve its fifth victory in his history in the World Cup and the third in a row against Poland, after it concluded its matches in the last World Cup in Russia 2018, with a 2/1 victory over the Egyptian national team, and the stars of French Hervé Renard will also work to avenge the loss against the Polish team, which lost in front of it are all the confrontations that brought them together.
The Saudi national team suffers from the absence of its two stars, Yasser Al-Shahrani and Salman Al-Faraj, who suffered two serious injuries against Argentina, but the rest of its stars are ready to complete the journey, while the Poland national team hopes to achieve a positive result in order to hold on to its hopes of crossing the group stage for the fifth time in its history and the first since the Mexican version in 1986, it has no choice but to achieve its first victory in the group against Saudi Arabia, especially since a very difficult confrontation awaits it against the Argentine national team in the last round, after a lackluster performance by the companions of the best player in the world in the past two years, who himself missed a penalty kick against Mexico, to hold on to the hope of continuing to fly. He is at the top of the list of historical scorers for the Poland national team, which he currently sits on with 76 goals.
The confrontation will be Saudi Arabia’s 11th against a European team, after previously facing the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden in the 1994 edition, Denmark and France in 1998, Germany and Ireland in 2002, Spain and Ukraine in 2006 and Russia in 2018.
In terms of the two teams’ previous confrontations, they first met at the Pierre de Coubertin stadium in Cannes, France, in a friendly match in 1994, which ended with a goal without a response for the European team, scored by Tomasz Vaishiski. In December of the same year, at Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium “Al-Malaz”, the Saudi national team lost its second match in history, due to a double by Jacek Dembinski and Tomasz Labinski, to meet again at the same stadium after 3 days, and the match ends with two goals for the European team.
The last confrontation between them was in the preparations for the 2006 World Cup, when the Saudi national team hosted its Polish counterpart at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, and the confrontation ended with a double by Lukasz Sosin, while Reda Tucker scored the only goal for the hosts.