Hilal Al-Rifai, Asian Football Confederation lecturer and former national youth team coach, said in a special technical analysis for Al Madinah that Nuno Santo has succeeded in creating an artistic identity for the Al Ittihad team this season and it has emerged in the team’s match against Al-Tai in the 15th round of the Saudi Roshen League. Al-Ittihad managed to beat Al-Tai with an unanswered goal at a fateful time, raising the team’s score to 34 points. .
Santo led Al Ittihad in the league for 15 matches, winning 10 times, drawing four matches and losing one match.
Al-Rifai explained that Santo’s imprint in the Al-Ittihad team is evident on the field, and in the team’s style of play, whether at home or on the street, and in the Al-Thai match, he managed to achieve victory despite purely defensive fortifications with whom Al-Tai played.
And he emphasized that the only goal of the match, which Coronado scored with a shot from outside the penalty area, is one of the tricks that Santo resorts to in closed matches in defense, as we note that there are instructions from him that his players shoot from behind outside the penalty area, as Coronado scored from a free kick in the Al Fayhaa Al Dauriya match, and in front of Al Tay the scenario is repeated from a moving ball.
Santo also managed to form a combination of players to overcome the circumstances he faced in every match, especially in the absence of some key players, and managed to score three points.
And Al-Rifai continued, everyone will notice the big difference in the Al-Ittihad team between this and last season, having a coach who knows what he wants and his success in choosing the right strategy for each match and for each period of the life of the competition.
He added that at the start of the season, Santo relied on a purely defensive approach, which reminded us of the astute hat-trick-winning Dimitri, and as we learned the ability of his players, we saw how he used the players on the circumstances of each match, and this season on the first The overall impression is that Al-Ittihad will somehow fail without two championships, especially since the Super Bowl championship will be a motivation for more.
And national coach Hilal Rifai said that we should not forget that Al Ittihad’s competitor, Al Nasr team, which is armed with the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, who has the widest international fame, whose deal is considered the best at the level of the Saudi League in throughout its period, put more pressure on the Al-Nasrawi team and gave Al-Ittihad and the youth an opportunity to share leadership with them.
He noted that the state of winning in recent matches revealed the level of pressure on the team and this resulted in the team not being able to perform well.
As for the youth, despite a strong start, they retreated in the post-stop period, and this is due to a state of imbalance and some influential injuries that led to the loss of a number of points.
While Al-Hilal has been suffering from absence and injury problems since the start of the season, despite this he is close to the lead with 32 points and the team’s participation in the Club World Cup, then participation in the AFC Champions League, could see Al- Hilal will become more mentally distracted, but Al-Hilal is better able to come out of this pressure, and this indicates that the methodology and technical identity is not affected by the change of coaches and departments.
Hilal concluded his performance by saying that the cooperation is very close to the top four, but the team may suffer with their coach Shamovskaya, especially in the second round, due to the lack of a ready replacement, which fills the void of the absence of a main player in his team.
