The exit of “Green Under-21” from the Asian Games in Nagoya, after losing to Uzbekistan by 3-0, raised the renewed question: Where do the Sunni groups of the Saudi national teams stand in the arena of competitions, continentally and globally?
The Saudi national team arrived in Japan looking to compete in a new Asian tournament, but ended its journey in the quarter-finals, after beating Qatar 2-0 and losing to South Korea with the same score in the group stage, before falling to Uzbekistan 0-3 in the elimination match.
But measuring the reality of the Saudi Sunni teams cannot start from Nagoya alone. Going back just four years leads to a completely different picture. When the Saudi Under-23 team was standing at the top of the continent, champion of the 2022 Asian Cup for the first time in its history, after defeating Uzbekistan 2-0 in the final.
It was not the title alone that was striking; Al-Akhdar finished the tournament with six complete matches without conceding a single goal, a number documented by the AFC, after goalkeeper Nawaf Al-Aqidi kept a clean sheet throughout the tournament.
From that summit, it is possible to begin reading a path that extends from 2022 until September 2026, and includes the U-17, 20, and 23-year-old teams, with a focus on the Asian Cup, the World Cup, the Asian Games, and the road to the Olympic Games.
After the Asian crown in 2022, the Saudi Under-23 team entered the 2024 edition as the defending champion.
It passed the group stage, but its journey was halted in the quarter-finals against Uzbekistan with a 0-2 loss, ending the title defense campaign, and with it the road to the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Two years later, Saudi Arabia hosted the 2026 AFC U-23 Cup, but this time the team was not even able to pass the first round.
The Greens beat Kyrgyzstan 1-0 with a late goal, before losing to Jordan, then to Vietnam 0-1, and leaving the tournament in the groups.
Thus, the U-23 team moved in three consecutive editions of the Asian Cup from champion of the continent in 2022, to the quarter-finals in 2024, then exiting from the group stage in 2026.
The picture is not much different when the Asian Games are added to the track. In Hangzhou, the Saudi team tied with Iran, then beat Mongolia and Vietnam, before beating India 2-0 in the round of 16, but they clashed again with Uzbekistan in the quarter-finals and lost 1-2.
Three years later, the scenario in Nagoya returned, but with a greater result: Uzbekistan 3 and Saudi Arabia 0. Here a remarkable number appears in the reading of recent years: Uzbekistan stopped the Saudi national team in three elimination matches at the U23 level after Saudi Arabia was crowned against it in the 2022 Asian final; The Hangzhou Asiad quarter-finals, then the U23 Asiad quarter-finals in 2024, and finally the Nagoya Asiad 2026 quarter-finals.
As for the U-20 team, it presents a different picture that does not allow all groups to be placed under one rule.
In the 2023 Asian Cup, Al-Akhdar entered the tournament as the defending champion, but did not advance beyond the group stage. It beat Kyrgyzstan 1-0, then lost to China 0-2 and Japan 1-2, leaving the tournament with only three points.
But the team returned in the 2025 edition in a completely different way. He reached the final, beating China 1-0 in the quarter-finals, then South Korea on penalties in the semi-finals, before drawing with Australia 1-1 in the final and losing the title 4-5 on penalties.
Most importantly, that journey brought Saudi Arabia back to the U-20 World Cup. But when the team moved from the Asian test to the global test in Chile 2025, the same results were not repeated.
The Greens lost to Colombia 0-1, then to Nigeria 2-3, before drawing with Norway 1-1 in their last match, leaving the World Cup in the group stage without a victory: one draw and two losses, during which they scored three goals and conceded five. FIFA records place Saudi Arabia among the teams that finished the tournament in their groups.
Here arises one of the questions worth considering: How can the ability to reach the Asian final be transformed into the ability to compete when the level of testing rises to the World Cup?
The U-17 team, in turn, presents a story of successes and failures in the same period.
In the 2023 Asian Cup, the Saudi national team made an ideal start. It defeated Australia 2-0, then Tajikistan 2-0, and China 3-0, and finished its group with a full score without conceding a single goal.
But one match changed the outcome of the tournament. The Greens lost to Uzbekistan 0-2 in the quarter-finals, and the price was not just exit from the Asian Cup; The four teams that qualified for the semi-finals would then have obtained the continent’s tickets to the 2023 U-17 World Cup, and thus Saudi Arabia lost the opportunity to appear internationally.
Two years later, the picture changed. In the 2025 AFC U-17 Cup, hosted by Saudi Arabia, Al-Akhdar reached the final. It surpassed Japan in the quarter-finals after a 2-2 draw and won 3-2 on penalties, then surpassed South Korea in the same way in the semi-finals after a 1-1 draw, before losing the final match to Uzbekistan 0-2.
Through the tournament, the team obtained a ticket to participate in the Qatar 2025 World Cup. But in the World Cup, a different outcome came. Saudi Arabia lost to Austria 0-1, then beat New Zealand 3-2, before losing to Mali 0-2. The total in the first round was one win, two losses, and three goals scored compared to five goals received.
Here a new variable enters that must be taken into account when evaluating the results of the junior national team. The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has decided to radically change the format of the Under-17 World Cup, starting in the 2025 edition. The tournament has transformed from an event held every two years into an annual tournament, and the number of participating teams has increased from 24 to 48, with Qatar being granted the right to host five consecutive editions between 2025 and 2029.
The Qatar 2025 World Cup was the first edition to implement the new system, with the participation of 48 teams divided into 12 groups, with the first and second places, in addition to the eight best third-place teams, qualifying for the round of 32.
This expansion, in turn, requires a reconsideration of the way the “qualification for the World Cup” number is read.
In Asia 2023, reaching the semi-finals was a condition for reserving one of the continent’s four tickets to the Junior World Cup, and therefore Saudi Arabia’s loss in the quarter-finals to Uzbekistan led to the loss of qualification.
As for the new system, the base of participants expanded globally, and with it the opportunities for Asian teams expanded.
The clearest evidence comes from the 2026 Asian U17 edition. Saudi Arabia opened the tournament by defeating Myanmar 4-0, then defeated Thailand 2-0, a result that officially guaranteed its qualification to the 2026 World Cup, before drawing with Tajikistan 5-5.
But her continental journey stopped immediately after that in the quarter-finals, after she lost to China 1-3 at home in Jeddah.
Thus, a clear contradiction appears between the two systems: in 2023, Al-Akhdar reached the Asian quarter-finals and did not qualify for the World Cup, while in 2026, he reached the same round and exited, but he had already secured a World Cup ticket.
This fact does not diminish the value of being in a global tournament, but it makes qualification alone less accurate as a measure of historical comparison, after doubling the number of U17 World Cup teams and turning it into an annual tournament.
In turn, Uzbekistan appears very strikingly when the results of the three categories are combined. In 2022, Saudi Arabia were the superior side, defeating Uzbekistan 2-0 in the U23 Asian Cup final and lifting the trophy in Tashkent.
But during the following years the scene changed in a number of decisive confrontations.
Uzbekistan eliminated Saudi Arabia from the quarter-finals of the Asian U17 in 2023 with a score of 2-0, and from the quarter-finals of the Asian Games in Hangzhou 2-1, and from the quarter-finals of the Asian U23 in 2024 with a score of 2-0.
In the 2025 U17 Asian Cup, it defeated Saudi Arabia 3-0 in the group stage, then came back and defeated it 2-0 in the final match.
Then came the Nagoya 2026 match, ending with a new Uzbek hat-trick. These results alone do not mean that there is a fixed gap between the two projects, but they make the comparison with Uzbekistan worthy of independent study, especially since the two sides are repeated in the final stages of the Asian Sunni Championships.
When collecting the scene since 2022, the results do not provide a simple answer that can be summed up with the word “success” or “failure.”
Saudi Arabia won the U23 Asian Cup in 2022, reached the U20 Asian Cup final in 2025, and the U17 Asian Final in the same year, qualified for the U20 and U17 World Cups in 2025, and also reserved a ticket for the U17 World Cup in 2026.
These are important continental results that cannot be omitted from any objective evaluation of the project. On the other hand, the Olympic team missed Paris 2024, and the U23 team moved from the Asian title to the quarter-finals and then exiting the groups in the last three editions, while the U20’s participation in the 2025 World Cup ended without a victory, and the U17 team recorded in the World Cup the same year one win versus two losses.
The U17 team was also eliminated from the quarter-finals of Asia 2026 against China, and the team participating in the Nagoya Asiad bid farewell to the competitions against Uzbekistan by three.
From the Asian title against Uzbekistan in 2022, to the loss to the same competitor by three in Nagoya four years later, there are dozens of matches, generations and different results.
This is perhaps the area from which the evaluation of Sunni teams should begin: not by the number of participations alone, but by what is happening within them, and the extent to which each generation is able to move one additional step closer to continental and global competition.
