LONDON: The Saudi Arabian Football Federation has become the latest national football association to announce their squad for the 2018 World Cup with a quirky social media video.
Featuring various depictions of the Kingdom’s culture, from date farms to the holy city of Makkah, the video features the excitement of Saudis — young and old — as the names of each Green Falcons player is announced.
القائمة النهائية للصقور الخضر في مونديال روسيا 2018#معاك_يالاخضر#WorldCup2018 pic.twitter.com/aYOlhTNwJl
— المنتخب السعودي (@SaudiNT) June 3, 2018
The clip joins several popular squad announcement videos made recently in the build-up to the tournament. England produced a high-quality video which has reached more than 3 million views on Twitter.
Not to be outdone, Spain did a mock-up of a WhatsApp group conversation with Julen Lopetegui as administrator. The coach adds players one by one in the group in order to create his final squad.
It has been some 36 years since their last World Cup, and to commemorate that fact, Peru created a video sent directly in local languages to their first opponents in Russia — France, Australia and Denmark.
Saudi Arabia face hosts Russia in the opening game of the showpiece tournament on June 14. The Green Falcons will also face Egypt and Uruguay.
It was announced on Sunday that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman will be attending the opening ceremony in Moscow.
The squad met the crown prince before they left for a training camp in Switzerland last week.
