The reason for Nawaf Al-Aqidi’s exclusion from the Saudi national team list, just a few days before the start of the “Green” adventure in the 2023 Asian Cup Qatar, raises controversy in the Saudi media, which attributed this occurrence to disciplinary reasons.
Today, Saturday, January 13, the Italian coach Roberto Mancini, coach of the Falcons, took the decision to exclude the Saudi Al-Nassr club goalkeeper from the list concerned with competing in the Asian Cup, without revealing the reason for excluding Nawaf Al-Aqidi.
Today, Saturday, the official account of the Saudi national team published a statement on the “X” platform in which it said that coach Roberto Mancini decided to include the trio Muhammad Al-Buraik, Talal Haji and Muhammad Yami in the final list of the 2023 Asian Cup.
On the other hand, the Italian coach ruled out the trio of Ayman Yahya, Abbas Al-Hassan and Nawaf Al-Aqidi, in addition to allowing player Rayan Hamed to leave the “Green” camp and rejoin the U-23 team camp.
Why was Nawaf Al-Aqidi excluded from the “Green” list?
Saudi media reports stated that the reason for Nawaf Al-Aqidi’s exclusion from the Saudi national team was that he got into an argument with his coach, Roberto Mancini, because of the latter’s reliance on goalkeepers Ahmed Al-Kassar and Raghed Al-Najjar in the Falcons’ recent friendly matches.
The Al-Nasr club goalkeeper was a key player in the Saudi national team. But he began to fall out of coach Roberto Mancini’s calculations, which made him rise up and reject this reality, a behavior that led him to be excluded from the Saudi national team’s roster for the 2023 Asian Cup Qatar.
Aside from the reason for Nawaf Al-Aqidi’s exclusion, the Saudi national team will participate in the 2023 Asian Nations Cup in Group 6 alongside the Oman, Thailand and Kyrgyzstan teams, and the “Green” team will play its first match in the Asian football tournament, on Tuesday, January 16, against the Oman national team.
The Saudi national team has 3 titles in the Asian Cup, the second most to have won the title after the Japanese national team, which won it 4 times. The “Green” team won these titles in the 1984, 1988 and 1996 editions.
The Saudi national team has not succeeded in winning the Asian Cup title since the 1996 edition, and it has not reached the final since the 2007 edition, which it lost to the Iraqi national team with a score of (1-0) with a goal by striker Younis Mahmoud.
2024-01-13 22:35:33
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