First Touch ’26 - Saudi Arabia

They shocked the world by toppling Messi’s Argentina in 2022; now Saudi Arabia is trying to prove that was no one-off. In this World Cup Capsule, David Gass tells the story of the Green Falcons—from the early days of English sailors kicking a ball around the Gulf, through Asian Cup dominance and a magical 1994 run in the United States, to years of stop-start progress on the global stage. We break down the seismic 2–1