From where Roberto Mancini sits at the top, very probably, of the list of the world’s best-paid head coaches, the trapdoor through which he can abruptly fall seems perilously close. A high salary means high expectations, and the position his Saudi Arabia team find themselves in, one slip-up from dropping out of the places that would keep the Green Falcons on the path to the 2026 World Cup, feels deeply uncomfortable.
Lose to Bahrain in Jeddah on Tuesday and, depending on results elsewhere in Group C of Asian qualifying for football’s great showpiece, Mancini’s men could find themselves fifth out of six in the pool, picking through the debris of a run of four home matches without a win.
If Mancini’s recent statements are a guide, another setback will have him focusing again on the great contradiction within Saudi football in the period since he last year joined the caravan of celebrated international stars arriving in the kingdom.
As Mancini sees it, the Saudi Pro League, so monied and magnetic to high-class professionals, is in danger of acting against the interest of the Green Falcons: the more foreign footballers come to its leading clubs, the fewer opportunities there are for Saudi players to accumulate valuable minutes on the pitch. They then come to the national camp lacking match sharpness.
So Mancini complained – again – after Thursday’s 2-0 home defeat to Japan left the Saudis beneath the Japanese, who are top of the group with a 100 per cent record, and below second-placed Australia on goal difference. Bahrain have the same four points as the Green Falcons, while Indonesia, unbeaten in their first three qualifiers, have made the group tight and competitive.
Competitive for everybody but Japan, that is. They last week scored their 13th and 14th goals in three Group C matches so far in a way that infuriated Mancini, from crosses into the Saudi penalty area that were inadequately policed. The second, from a corner, sealed the outcome. The first, Daichi Kamada’s goal after 14 minutes, had the ball passing back and forth across the Saudi defence three times.
If the coach detected at that point that his markers were less than alert, he imagined he knew why. The central defenders who started against Japan, Hassan Tambakti and Ali Lajami have been notably short of playing time in the Pro League.
Lajami has started just two of Al Nassr’s six league fixtures this season and had not seen any action since playing for his club in the AFC Champions League in mid-September. Tambakti has played a mere 92 minutes in Al Hilal’s defence of their Saudi title. He’s usually on the champions’ bench.
Nor was Saud Abdulhamid, who joined Roma from Al Hilal in the summer, greatly flattered by the lead-up to Kamada’s goal, the full-back caught in two minds as the first cross floated into the danger zone.
Saud is a pathfinder for compatriots, the first Saudi to sign for a club in Italy’s Serie A. But he’s yet to come off the bench in the Italian league, and linked up with Mancini’s squad last week on the back of just 84 minutes of Europa League action under his belt as a Roma player.
That encapsulates Mancini’s frustrations. “The only problem we have, is that three years ago all the Saudi players played every [club] game," said the Italian. “And today, 50 or 60 per cent don't.”
He looks over a squad with plenty of talent, but sees clear signs of early-season rustiness. Besides his underused central defenders, their club opportunities limited by the first XI status of illustrious foreign players like Al Hilal’s Kalidou Koulibaly and Al Nassr’s Aymeric Laporte, midfielders Abdulelah Al Malki, limited to a mere 41 minutes in the league, all off the bench for Al Ettifaq, and Nasser Al Dawsari – one start for Al Hilal – came into the Japan fixture short of competitive rhythm.
Up front, Ayman Yahya has so far been on the pitch for Al Nassr for just 14 minutes in the league this term. He can only look around at the club colleagues in pole position for starting XI places – Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mane, Otavio and Talisca – and wonder when he will reach even 90 minutes.
One solution to the perceived bottleneck on Saudi talent at the upper level of the Pro League is for players to move abroad, as 23-year-old Faisal Al Ghamdi and the winger Marwan Al Sahafi, 20, have, going on loan to Belgium’s Beerschot from Al Ittihad.
The experience will doubtless be educative, but these early weeks of their adventure have been dispiritingly tough. Beerschot, where both young Saudis are being used in the first team, sit bottom of the Belgium Pro League, winless in 10 matches.
Mancini is not quite at crisis point yet, but the possible path to the World Cup finals in North and Central America is in danger of passing from fast-track to a slow, arduous lane. There are difficult away trips – to Japan, Australia and Indonesia – yet to come.
Only the top two finishers in Group C go direct to the 2026 finals, while third and fourth will be obliged to drop through the penultimate trapdoor and another round of qualifying that has two guaranteed places for Asian countries.
After that, there’s play-offs, and a possible duel with a country from another continent for a single spot. This is not the route Mancini envisaged when he left his role as head coach in his native Italy 14 months ago, lining up his lucrative position with a country of an elevated enough status in Asian football to assume that one of the eight – possibly nine – available Asian places at the World Cup would be theirs.
But then, for all his accomplishments, as a player and manager in club and international football, World Cup campaigns have had a history of unkindness towards Mancini.
Play-offs have especially bad memories. Italy were obliged to take that route for Qatar 2022 qualifying and it turned into a cul-de-sac. The then European champions were beaten at home by North Macedonia. A second successive World Cup qualifying had been fluffed by the Italians.
Mancini had wretched experiences of World Cups as a player, too. He won 36 caps for his country across a decade as creative support striker, but none of them were at World Cup final tournaments. He spent the entirety of the 1990 event, staged in Italy, sitting on the Azzurri bench: seven matches as an unused substitute.
When, having played an active part in qualifying for the 1994 US-hosted World Cup, he sought assurances from the Italy manager Arrigo Sacchi that he would go to those finals with a good prospect of starting in games, he felt so disappointed by the answer he effectively called time on his career with Italy, who went on to reach that final.
There’s a full album of regrets in all those World Cup disappointments. Mancini would prefer not to dwell on them – “We don’t live in the past,” he said after the Japan defeat – and certainly not to add another chapter to his story of World Cup absences.
