Al-Ittihad Adjusts Its Standby Plans: Absences Redraw the International Break Strategy

Return to Action and Training

Al-Ittihad is set to resume its Roshn Saudi League campaign, returning to training on Friday at their home ground after an eight-day break that followed their King’s Cup semifinal defeat on penalties. The session will begin with intensive fitness tests to gauge players’ physical readiness after the rest period that coincided with Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the start of the international window.

According to the Saudi paper Al-Riyadhiya, the club will not schedule any friendly matches during this window, as around 10 players are away with their national teams. The absence list includes several key Saudis who will be pulling on national jerseys in the coming days.

Among the Saudi squad, Hasan Kadsh and Saleh Al-Shehri were called up to the first team, while Mohammed Al-Eisi and Ahmed Sharahili joined the national side’s “B” team.

International Departures and an International-Spotlight Schedule

On the foreign front, six players have left the club to join their respective national teams: the Brazilian Fabinho, Albanian Mario Metai, Algerian Houssam Aouar, Portuguese Roger Fernandes, Cameroonian Stefan Keller, and Serbian Predrag Rajkovic. These withdrawals remove a substantial portion of the squad from Saudi league duties for the window.

The next match for Al-Ittihad is the 27th round of the Roshn Saudi League, against Al-Hazm, scheduled for Friday, April 3, at Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium in Jeddah. The club currently sits sixth in the standings with 42 points, 25 points behind the leaders, Al-Nassr.

Punchline 1: If tactics were bullets, the international break just fired a whole magazine—hope the target was the calendar, not the scoreboard.

Punchline 2: With the bench practicing social distancing and the calendar doing double duty as coach, the only thing sharper than the cuts in the plan might be my sense of humor—courtesy of football’s finest debugging session.