Marked for Iván Santillán
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match12 Dec 2026
10 matches without a win for Al Shabab
The run now stands at 10, and the questions being asked around Al Shabab are no longer polite ones.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Faisal Al Naqbi 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.
Match12 Dec 2026
Al Shabab cannot find the net
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Match12 Dec 2026
Al Nasr left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad14 Dec 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Erick Flores falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market23 Nov 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match21 Nov 2026
No end in sight to Al Shabab's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Al Shabab has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Diego Méndez in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match21 Nov 2026
A bad afternoon for Al Shabab against Dibba
1‑2 to Dibba, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Bandar Nader gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Marked 7.80. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.45 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Diego Méndez in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Ali Suqrat is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Defensive actions: 22, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Loan watch12 Oct 2026
“I did not go to Sepahan to sit and watch. I want to come back to Al Shabab and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
The terraces12 Oct 2026
At 21 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad17 Aug 2026
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Shabab lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market17 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Al Shabab can pretend not to have heard.
Market17 Aug 2026
Al Wahda come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Al Shabab did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Diego Méndez in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Shabab this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.