Going 2 down does something to a side, and what it usually does is finish them. Not here. Damac rebuilt the afternoon goal by goal, and Najran had no answer to any of it.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mohammed Al-Helali. 3‑2 against Najran, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 23 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.
Marked 8.19 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The dugout24 Sep 2029
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Waleed Al-Nemer, on a 3‑2 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Nobody at Damac will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nobody at Damac will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Alfharezzi Buffon was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The window is open, and with it the only month of the year when a supporter’s hopes are limited by nothing but arithmetic. The board know the arithmetic; the supporters know the hopes.
Sanousi Al-Hawsawi 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.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Nobody at Damac will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Damac know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Sanousi Al-Hawsawi 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.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
8.35. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Rashid Al-Subaie has come out of that comparison in the side, and Damac have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Damac scored in the 93th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Majed Al-Awad will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Damac the goodbyes have quietly begun.
At 16 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.