Saudi Arabia’s Greek head coach Georgios Donis has sprung a surprise involving an Al-Hilal player for the clash with Qatar in the Arabian Gulf Cup “Gulf 27”.<\/p>\n
The Saudis face Qatar today, Saturday, at the Al-Inma Stadium in Jeddah, in the semi-final of the Gulf tournament.<\/p>\n
Donis named his starting line-up and left out Mohammed Abu Al-Shamat, who had featured in every one of Saudi Arabia’s group-stage matches. It was a major shock.<\/p>\n
Stranger still, the Greek coach ignored Nawaf Boushal, an occasional right-back, and turned instead to Al-Hilal full-back Mohammed Mahzari, who had not played a single minute in the group stage.<\/p>\n
This will be Mahzari’s first official appearance for Saudi Arabia. His call-up rewards the outstanding form he has shown at Al-Hilal since arriving from Al-Taawoun last summer.<\/p>\n
Hassan Tambakti also drops to the bench, with Donis trusting Abdulelah Al-Amri and Jihad Zikri in the heart of defence and Metab Al-Harbi at left-back.<\/p>\n
Up front, Firas Al-Buraikan leads the line ahead of Abdullah Al-Hamdan, backed by the trio of Sultan Mandash, Saleh Abu Al-Shamat and Hammam Al-Hammami.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia took maximum points from their group. Qatar collected 7 points to finish second in the other group on goal difference behind the UAE.<\/p>\n
Whoever wins this one will meet the victor of the UAE-Oman tie in the Gulf 27 final next Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Saudi national team’s line-up was as follows:<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper: Mohammed Al-Owais<\/p>\n
Defence: Mohammed Mahzari – Jihad Zikri – Abdulelah Al-Amri – Metab Al-Harbi<\/p>\n
Midfield: Mohammed Kanno – Nasser Al-Dawsari – Saleh Abu Al-Shamat<\/p>\n
Attack: Sultan Mandash – Firas Al-Buraikan – Hammam Al-Hammami<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia’s Greek head coach Georgios Donis has sprung a surprise involving an Al-Hilal player for the clash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[283984,278103,85,46,286909,1823,78,286259,105],"class_list":["post-635346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-g-donis","tag-gulf-cup","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-m-mahzari","tag-qatar","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-saudi-arabia-vs-qatar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635346","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=635346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}