LONDON: They say in football that you should never go back and Herve Renard must be thinking about that at the moment as his second spell in charge of Saudi Arabia came to an end on Friday.
The Frenchman returned in October 2024 but lasted just 18 months. A more sober statistic is that there are less than two months before the Green Falcons kick off the 2026 World Cup against Uruguay on June 15 in Miami.
He won’t get a chance then to engineer another shock opening win over South American opposition to rival that famous Argentina victory at the 2022 World Cup. The way things were going, however, and even with Uruguay not being as strong as their neighbors and rivals, there was little prospect of that happening. This team of 2026 does not look like the one of four years ago.
The friendlies in March spelled the end, though it has taken almost three weeks for the axe to fall. The 4-0 loss against Egypt in Jeddah was a disaster. As the hero of the 1994 World Cup (the first and last time the team got to the knockout stages of the tournament) Saeed Al-Owairan said, it could have been a lot more, and even the Egyptians were complaining about how little of a test they were given. The defense was all over the place and there was little fluidity or creativity in attack. The performance against Serbia was better but the 2-1 defeat was still a defeat.
