After a late change in the dugout, Georgios Donis will lead Saudi Arabia into the World Cup. The 56-year-old Greek coach was appointed national team manager just two months before the start of the tournament after the sacking of Herve Renard.<\/p>\n
A veteran of tournament football, Renard had stepped in during the qualification campaign to replace Roberto Mancini and get Saudi Arabia over the line. But after some disastrous friendly results in March, and rising tensions between him and the country\u2019s Football Federation, the Frenchman was relieved of his duties.<\/p>\n
For Donis, who spent the previous two seasons in charge of Saudi club Al-Khaleej, the appointment represents a major – and unexpected – opportunity to manage a national team on football\u2019s biggest stage.<\/p>\n
He has previously held a variety of managerial positions, including spells with Greek giants Panathinaikos and AEK Athens, Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv, and several clubs in the Middle East, most notably Al-Hilal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a late change in the dugout, Georgios Donis will lead Saudi Arabia into the World Cup. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-485792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}