When Morocco drew against Brazil y'all said Brazil is washed. I wonder what you will say about Spain now that they drew against Cape Verde. Just put your pride aside and give credit to the African side.
Cape Verde's Roberto Lopes just helped his country earn their first-ever World Cup point vs. Spain thanks to a LinkedIn message.
He assumed a message from the coach at the time asking him to play for the national team was spam because it was in Portuguese.
Nine months later, they sent it again in English and the rest is history 🤯
Pay attention to Saudi .
They’re hosting the World Cup in 2034 and they have serious plans to do well at that World Cup.
First thing for them is to invest in their league. These Saudi players in this Uruguay game, you could see their quality.
They’re being coached by elite managers, they play with or against Ronaldo, Benzema, Kante, Mahrez, Mane, etc. these are players that have won everything.
Exposure to such training programmes, world class coaches and team mates, facilities, it’s just madness. Most of the players in their squad are from the 4 government-owned teams like Hilal, Nassr, Ahli, some from Al Qadsia too which is also a good side.
These top teams are exposed to world class structures (you can’t say same for the others, but that’s why the squad is made up of most players from the top teams). One of their players, Saud, was even bold enough to leave the league and he’s just done amazingly well at RC Lens this season,after he joined on loan from Roma. This is good for them too.
Steven Gerrard shared a bit about the Saudi plan on “Stick to Football” recently. He said one of the things they told him was that they wanted to develop their academies especially and they wanted him to be part of it. I’ve attached the video.
There’s an u21 league that is serious now in Saudi. You can also go pro at 16 years of age in Saudi now. It was 18 before. The youngsters are also exposed to these facilities which will aid their development, because some of them are expected to make that squad in 2034.
Let me end this tweet with the shortfall of this project. Due to the influx of top players, many of these young players are not getting so much playing time, and they need to. They have a decent national team now but most of them won’t be present in 2034 when they host the World Cup at home.
You can understand why these top teams don’t give so much youngsters opportunities even in Europe, this is because they’re chasing the league and they have no time for trials with the kids, this has to change. I always support the youth. I think teams are entitled to 8 foreign players, the league organisers should also put something in place to ensure teams play u21 players and the likes.
I’m sure they’re thinking of these things and I’m rooting for them to do well. Fingers crossed.