The Al Shabab Post
Squad5 Oct 2026
Youssef Al Hashmi breaks a bone — 78 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 78 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Real improvement from Khalid Al Suwaidi at Al Shabab
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Khalid Al Suwaidi is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Al Shabab
Youssef Al Menhali was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Salem Saeed has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Loan watch5 Oct 2026
Walid Abdulrahman has seen enough of Al Fujairah
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Al Shabab, and 0 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
The crowd has taken to Khalid Saeed
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Nobody could get near Khalid Rashid
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Khalid Saeed takes the honours
Marked 7.56 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Al Shabab had the best player on the pitch.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
The spotlight tightens on Ali Al Naqbi
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
In brief
- Match Al Shabab and Al Dhafra cancel each other out
- Player ratings The chances came and went for Ali Al Naqbi
- Player ratings Hamdan Al Junaibi could not find anything