The Al-Qadisiyah team recorded many gains from its recent victory over Abha, which went beyond earning three points to take the lead in the Saudi Professional League as the first spoils, benefiting from the postponement of Al-Hilal’s match against Riyadh, thus ensuring that it remains in the lead until its next confrontation against Al-Hilal in the expected summit, next Friday, if it succeeds in surpassing Al-Taawoun, on Tuesday, in the matches of the tenth round.
This constitutes a great moral motivation for the Al-Qadisiyah team to chart a path to strong competition to win the Saudi League championship for the first time in its history, and it is more prepared than ever to achieve that dream in light of the presence of foreign and local names at a high technical level and the presence of a bench of distinguished substitutes, and under the leadership of an experienced and courageous coach in terms of open play and attack, even against strong teams that have capabilities and experience in competition except for the long breath.
With the end of the first third of the Saudi Professional League Championship, it is clearly evident how many teams are able to compete in the strongest and most difficult tournament. As the league will not include the four teams, Al-Hilal, Al-Nasr, and Al-Ahly, except for Al-Qadisiyah, while Al-Ittihad is still reeling and fluctuating in levels, even if before the last stop it was the only one that had not lost. It even surpassed Al-Nasr, the defending champion, and Al-Qadisiyah, the current leader. However, the lack of competent substitutes may limit its ability to compete in the league and even the AFC Champions League for the elite, as the team exited with one point from two matches.
It may be the first time in the history of Al-Qadisiyah Club that two team games have topped the Premier League competitions, as the football team’s lead coincided with the handball team’s lead, with the Gulf team, the title holder in the last three years, having deferrals and most of the candidates to achieve the handball league.
This superiority achieved by Al-Qadisiyah represents confirmation of the amount of work and the high and skillful expenditure at the same time in order to advance the club in all its games, and that the superiority is not limited to the game of football, which represents the club’s facade.
Returning to Al-Qadisiyah’s gains from winning over Abha and taking the lead, the team overcame the great fatigue that the players suffered after returning from the trip to Uzbekistan, and playing the second round of the AFC Champions League for the elite, where they returned with a draw, which was like a loss compared to the events of the match against Pakhtakor, which succeeded in adjusting in the last minutes from an unconvincing penalty kick for Al-Qadsawiyyin, and this had a qualitative negative impact on the morale of the players, and they were required to quickly turn the continental page and focus. Some of them even needed physical rest, such as the Spanish captain Nacho and striker Quinones, and this is what the coach did when he decided to rest them.
But the injury of the Italian player Retegui was one of the negative events in the match, especially since he was going through a period in his artistic prime, and he scored the first goal for his team in the same match, placing him behind the Englishman Ivan Noni on the scorers list with 6 goals.
The coach will have to rest new names against Al-Taawoun in Al-Qassim, as he wants all his players to be fully prepared for the summit confrontation against Al-Hilal in Dammam.
In response to Asharq Al-Awsat’s question about resting some names to face Al Hilal, Rodgers said: “Resting names and rotating them is necessary in light of the pressure of the matches, and this is what happened against Abha, against whom the confrontation was difficult and we were exhausted. We rested some names while Abha, in return, wanted to win.”
He added: “We are thinking about facing Al-Taawoun, and we will also release several names, but we will not think about the Al-Hilal match until after the next confrontation is completed. “The focus for each match is individual.”
