Khaberni - Hervé Renard, coach of the Saudi national team, emphasized the importance of the friendly match against the Egyptian national team, especially as it comes within the last camp before the World Cup next summer.
The Saudi national team will host its Egyptian counterpart on Friday, at the Inma Stadium in Jeddah as part of the preparations of both teams for the 2026 World Cup, while the Saudi team will also play a second friendly during the current camp, visiting the Serbian national team next Tuesday.
Renard said in the press conference held on Thursday to discuss the Egypt friendly that he is happy with this matchup and expressed his aspiration to deliver a good performance before heading to face Serbia.
About his criteria for choosing 6 goalkeepers without selecting Mohamed Al-Owais, the goalkeeper for Al-Ula team, Renard revealed: "The first criterion is the player's performance and duties, playing minutes are very important, I have been relying on Nawaf Al-Aqidi as the main goalkeeper and I am satisfied with his performance. As for Al-Owais, I used to rely on him although he wasn't playing, and now it is difficult for him to return unless he was the first goalkeeper, so I preferred not to call him as he would be the second goalkeeper."
Renard revealed that he urged many players after the Arab Cup to work on finding opportunities to get more playing time and to pay attention to nutrition, sleep, and training in order to strongly participate in the World Cup, pointing out that he expected more players to leave their clubs during the last winter transfer period to get a chance to play.
The coach of the Saudi national team emphasized the need to go to the World Cup with great aspirations and to deliver a better performance than what was presented in the Arab Cup, noting that competing for the third place in the group is not a bad idea especially since the group includes Spain, the best national team in the world, in addition to Uruguay and Cape Verde.
He continued: "For this reason, I brought 25 players in the main list, and there are players I did not call because I already know them. There are players in the second list I don't know and it's exciting to follow them and get to know them in full detail through training with the second national team," pointing out that the players still have a lot of work to do to improve.
