Atento Scaloni: Saudi Arabia's top scorer suffered a serious injury 7 months after debut at the World Cup in Qatar

The scorer of the Saudi Arabian national team, Saleh Al-Shehri, suffered a torn Achilles tendon in his right leg and will reach the Qatar 2022 World Cup with Argentina, Mexico and Poland. The 28-year-old striker was injured during the game of Al-Hilal, a team led by Ramon Diaz, in the Asian Champions League.

The Riyadh club confirmed in recent hours that Al-Shehri, the figure and top scorer of the Arab national team in the Asian qualifiers with seven goals, will have to be operated in the coming days.

Usually this injury requires a recovery of between four and six months, so his return to the courts would be very close to the World Cup debut against Argentina, on November 22 at the Lusail stadium.

The Children of the Desert appear as one of the great Asian powers and surely the most outstanding Arab national team. With three continental titles under his belt, he is a sleeping giant: he has not achieved success since the 1996 Asian Cup. Saudi Arabia has a relatively modern national team, having played its first World Cup in 1994, the only time it passed the first round. Four Argentine coaches were able to experiment with the Saudis: Jorge Solari, Gabriel Calderón, Edgardo Bauza and Juan Antonio Pizzi.

Messi's Argentina will debut against the Children of the Desert, which are led by Frenchman Hervé Renard and came to the World Cup as leaders in their area. La Pulga already has in its history a match against this rival in a friendly match that did not leave the best of memories.

In Lionel Messi's only match against Saudi Arabia, his first opponent at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, was in November 2012, at the start of Alejandro Sabella's cycle that culminated in the runner-up of the world championship two years later. The match was played in Riyadh and ended up tied 0-0. The rosario crack played the 90 minutes, wore the captain's armband and shared the offense with Kun Agüero, Di Maria and Toto Salvio.

The most striking thing that commitment left was not on the playing field of King Fahd Stadium, but in the preview of the match there were moments of tension with a Leo Messi who revolutionized the public with his arrived and ended up frightened by an officer who was protecting him and involuntarily pointed a rifle in his face.

The Argentine team won a lackluster draw against a Saudi team that at the time was led by Frank Rijkaard, the Dutch coach who just made Messi debut at FC Barcelona.

At present, Frenchman Hervé Renard, without large scrolls as a footballer but with experiences in several clubs in addition to four national teams (Zambia, Angola, Ivory Coast and Morocco), took over the Saudi national team in 2019 and sealed the ticket to Qatar 2022. The Arabs ended up undefeated in the first phase above the line of Uzbekistan, Palestine, Singapore and Yemen. The good performance was maintained in the next round, in which he again led Group B, leaving Japan in second place for the last victory against Australia, which came third.

The peculiarity of the Children of the Desert is that all its components play in domestic football. Among his figures are Salem Al-Dawsari, the top scorer in the qualifying round with Saleh Al-Shehri with 7 goals (both playing in Al-Hilal), Fahad Al Muwallad (Al-Ittihad) and the 21-year-old promising Firas Al-Buraikan, who plays in Al-Fateh.

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