June 28 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia \u2060football federation president Yasser Al-Misehal resigned from his \u2060post on Sunday as a result of the national \u200cteam’s early exit from the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The Saudis finished bottom of Group H with two points and were eliminated after drawing with both Uruguay \u200band Cape Verde and losing to Spain.<\/p>\n
“The \u2060national team’s failure to \u2060qualify for the next round of the World Cup is a \u2060result \u200cthat falls short of all our ambitions,” Al-Misehal wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
“I bear full responsibility for \u2060it, apologising to everyone who hoped to see \u200bour team in \u200ca better position.<\/p>\n
“Based on my conviction that responsibility requires \u2060providing the \u200bopportunity for a new phase, I have decided not to continue until the end of the current term.”<\/p>\n
Al-Misehal had been in the \u2060role for seven years and was \u200bheavily involved in Saudi Arabia’s successful bid to win the hosting rights for the 2034 World Cup.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia were appearing at \u2060their third consecutive World Cup and seventh in total but their preparations were hit by the decision to replace Herve Renard with Georgios Donis less than two months before the \u200btournament kicked off.<\/p>\n
The results come after \u2060the government had poured huge sums in the sport over recent \u200byears, with Saudi clubs signing high-profile \u200cplayers including Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar \u200bJunior in an effort to boost standards within the country.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Michael Church; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 28 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia \u2060football federation president Yasser Al-Misehal resigned from his \u2060post on Sunday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-766979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}