LONDON: Yasser Al-Mosailem is relishing the duel for the Green Falcons’ No. 1 jersey after he was recalled to the national team for Juan Antonio Pizzi’s first get-together.
Al-Mosailem was the first choice for most of the World Cup qualifying campaign under Bert van Marwijk, playing seven times but he found himself out of the squad completely when Edgardo Bauza took charge, missing the ill-fated camp in Portugal.
But the Al-Ahli stopper was named in Pizzi’s first squad as one of four goalkeepers and he is currently in Riyadh with the rest of the Green Falcons’ squad for the first of five training camps under Pizzi. Abdullah Al-Mayouf, Waleed Abdullah and Mohamed Al-Owais are the other goalkeepers in the squad and they will all be looking to impress Pizzi as only three will go to the World Cup in Russia.
“This is competition between teammates and of course everyone wants to play but in the end this decision is made by the team’s coach,” said Al-Mosailem in an interview published on the Saudi Football Federation’s (SAFF) Twitter account. “The competition between keepers is honest, everyone hopes to play, the goal when God agrees to it, you must be an honest competitor with your colleagues on the pitch, the final decision, only one will play and will be decided by the coach of the team. Of course most of the keepers are at a close level, as you see Abdullah Mayouf who is a regular at Al-Hilal ahead of professional Ali Al-Habsi. At Al-Ahly the competition between Mohammed Alowais and I is very strong, for the benefit of the national team and at Al-Ittihad Assaf and Fawaz Al-Qarni, the same level between them and the youngster Walid at Al-Nassr and the levels of the goalkeepers will spur them on and give strength to the Saudi national keepers.”
The SAFF have harnessed the help of Oliver Kahn, the German great, to aid the development of their goalkeepers. Kahn, who retired from playing in 2008, runs his own company, GoalPlay, with business partner Moritz Mattes and signed a partnership agreement with the (SAFF) to help improve the level of goalkeeping in the Kingdom with one eye on next summer’s Fifa World Cup. The goalkeepers, Al-Mosailem says, traveled to Germany recently for a training camp.
“The aim was clear: to find out the different players’ capabilities and how to develop some of their skills, such as response/reaction, speed and physical performance,” he said. “This was excellent but I wish that we can have this here in Saudi as well, at least twice a week for example, and then after that they can return to their club and play the tournaments. These tournaments are very important and if we can bring the idea to Saudi Arabia then we will be able to better train Saudi goalkeepers.”
Al-Mosailem, 33, wants clubs in the Saudi Professional League to resist the urge to bring in a goalkeeper from overseas, like Al-Hilal have done with Ali Al-Habsi, and focus instead on developing their own.
“I said it previously, improving Saudi goalkeepers is better than to bring a foreign goalkeeper,” Al-Mosailem said. “Bringing a top coaching staff and put forward to the clubs, they will be good coaches that follow a program, which is almost the same as other clubs, depending on the differing tactics of a coach, and from it, the national team would benefit. Don’t bring a foreign goalkeeper. I see the same goalkeepers at the same level and make the same mistakes here or outside the country. To improve your goalkeepers, you must bring a top coaching staff especially at youth level.”