The contrast could scarcely have been greater. A team containing a variety of players who are colleagues of world sport’s best paid athlete failed to make it past a former bank clerk who only got his chance to play at the World Cup via LinkedIn.
Saudi Arabia crashed out of the tournament at the first hurdle, after they were held by the mighty outsiders from Cape Verde in Houston.
It means Pico Lopes, the Shamrock Rovers defender who was working in a bank when he was approached to play for Cape Verde on the recruitment website, can now look forward to pitting himself against Lionel Messi in the next round.
Many of the Saudi Arabia players have already been there, done that, and toasted a World Cup victory against Messi’s Argentina.
But that heady night in Doha three and a half years ago feels an age away now, as the Green Eagles get set to head straight home from the United States.
Had Saudi Arabia made it through, they would unlikely have been star-struck by Messi. After all, many of them have Cristiano Ronaldo as their teammate. All either play with or against world stars on a weekly basis in the Saudi Pro League.
The country’s domestic league is home to three of the world’s top 10 best paid players, according to Forbes, whose rich list is led by Ronaldo, earning over $200 million a year.
So why could the national team not make it through the group stage at an inflated World Cup where 67 per cent of teams will do precisely that?
When Ronaldo arrived in the league, he sparked a rush of outstanding overseas players to move to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Pro League (SPL) has thrived as a result. Ronaldo’s own personal quest to win the league became a story that attracted global interest.
When he finally achieved at, at the end of the season just finished, there were more eyeballs on the league than many would have ever thought possible pre-Ronaldo.
Even as far afield as America, people were taking note. “Right now everyone is talking about the Saudi league climax,” Clint Demspey was quoted as saying as Al Nassr were vying with relegation bound Damac in the season finale.
The former USA striker went on to say, “Saudi is already among the top leagues; MLS is far behind.”
And yet the growth of the league has had a series of unwanted consequences for the national team it supports.
That is not without precedence. At the 1990 World Cup, England had their best performance in 24 years as they reached the semi-finals.
The enthusiasm Italia ’90 generated put in motion the formation of the Premier League, which has become the world’s most watched and most money-spinning competition.
Like the SPL now, it was transformed by both new wealth, alterations to employment law, and amendments to the regulations governing overseas players. As a result, the number of foreign players at the top clubs far outweighed home-grown ones.
Within three years of the Premier League’s start in 1992, England’s national team had plummeted from fourth in the Fifa standing to 27th – their lowest ever ranking. And they failed to qualify for the first World Cup after the advent of the Premier League.
The parallels to the SPL are striking. Saudi Arabia were 48th in the Fifa rankings when Ronaldo arrived. Three and a half years later, they sit 59th. And, if the performance at the World Cup is anything to go by, the decline will be difficult to arrest.
The squad that played at the World Cup was a mishmash of players who either played for lower-ranked SPL sides who did not vie for honours with Ronaldo and Co, or who were squad players in the top teams.
Saud Abdulhamid, their trailblazing right back who plays for Lens in France, was in a minority of one among players with overseas experience.
Feras Al Brikan, the first-choice striker, exemplifies the point. He scored the winning goal as Al Ahli Saudi won the Asian Champions League last season. Tellingly, he did so as a substitute.
He played 1,730 minutes for Al Ahli Saudi in the SPL last season, an average of 50 minutes per game. He was back up to Ivan Toney, the prolific Englishman who averaged over 80 minutes per game.
It stands to reason Al Brikan was not conditioned to lead the line for three games at the World Cup when he has only been a bit part at club level.
The problem exists all over the field, but is exacerbated in goal. There are a number of great Saudi Arabia-based goalkeepers at the World Cup.
Al Hilal’s Yassine Bounou, for example, will expect to go deep in the tournament with Morocco.
But having imported stars for a position where there can only be one player per line up has proved prohibitive for home-bred players.
It meant Mohammed Al Owais, who plays for Al Ula in the second tier, found himself between the posts for the national team at the World Cup.
The dismal World Cup campaign was not exclusively the fault of the SPL. The problems are many and varied.
Successive injudicious appointments for head coach hamstrung them. Roberto Mancini, who was appointed at the start of the World Cup cycle, was an expensive flop.
Herve Renard, who returned to replace Mancini, had lost all the lustre of his previous appointment.
Georgios Donis had little chance of making an improvement, with scarcely a month to work with.
And the Green Eagles have suffered from the natural cycle of sport, too. The players who underpinned their competitiveness in Qatar are four years older, and not necessarily four years better.
Salem Al Dawsari, their great talisman, has shown his age this season. Mohammed Kanno, playing his third World Cup, had nothing like the impact a player of his pedigree might have expected to.
So, how to resolve the problems? There are no easy fixes, but if anyone has the resources to satisfy a football-mad population, it is Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom might be revising how it spends its money on sport, and it has already pulled its funding from LIV Golf.
But it is safe to assume, with the World Cup heading there in 2034, funding for football will be ring-fenced.
The Pro League project needs to be tweaked to work better for Saudi Arabian players. And the coach of the national team needs eight years to construct a side to compete, rather than fewer than eight weeks which Donis had this time.
