ALICANTE — The Saudi National Football team delegation left Riyadh on Saturday for the Spanish city of Alicante, to start the second phase of preparations for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. The Green Falcons will hold a preparatory camp in Alicante from Sept. 17 to 27, where they are scheduled to play two friendlies during the second training phase. The first friendly match of the Saudi national team will be on Sept. 23 against Ecuador, while the second friendly match will be on Sept. 27 against the United States. Both of the matches will be played at the Estadio Nueva Condomina in Murcia city in southeastern Spain. It is noteworthy that the national team had previously played two friendlies against Colombia and Venezuela in June, which were part of the first phase of the preparatory program for the World Cup. The French coach of the Saudi national team Hervé Renard has called up 26 players to join the camp. They are: Mohammed Al-Owais; Fawaz Al-Qarni; Salem Al-Dawsari; Abdullah Madu; Salman Al-Faraj; Firas Al-Buraikan; Nawaf Alaqidi; Mohamed Kanno; Hassan Tambakti and Yasser Al-Shahrani. Also called up are: Sami Al-Najei; Mohammed Al Yami; Saud Abdulhamid; Hattan Bahebri; Ahmed Bamsaud; Awad Al Nashri; Ali Al-Bulaihi; Abdulelah Al-Amri; and Sultan Al-Ghanam. Completing the squad are: Ali Al-Hassan; Nasser Al-Dawsari; Riyadh Sharahili; Nawaf Al-Abed; Haitham Asiri; Fahad Al-Muwallad and Haroune Camara. As for the friendly matches that the team will play in the remaining 3 stages of the preparatory program, the national team's management announced that the team would play 8 other friendly matches. The 8 remaining will be against the teams of Ecuador, United States, Macedonia, Albania, Honduras, Iceland, Panama and Croatia. It is worth mentioning that the Saudi national team is in the third group (Group C) in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, along with Argentina, Mexico and Poland.
