Published on 6/27/2026
With an unprecedented historical achievement, the Cape Verde team deservedly reserved its place in the knockout rounds, while the Saudi team bid farewell to the 2026 World Cup, bringing with it statistics that reflect a clear discrepancy between regaining its defensive solidity and its severe offensive suffering.
An exceptional African achievement for “blue sharks”
By reaching the round of 16, the Cape Verde team wrote its name in golden letters, becoming the ninth African team in the history of the World Cup to succeed in skipping the group stage. This qualification reinforces the strong African presence in the 2026 edition, as he joined the continent’s teams that achieved this achievement for the first time in this edition (along with Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa).
What doubles the value of this historic achievement is that Cape Verde has become the first team to participate in the World Cup for the first time and succeed in passing from the group stage since Slovakia’s achievement in 2010, and it is also the first African team to achieve this in its first appearance since Ghana in 2006.
Read also
list of 2 itemsend of list
The newcomer not only qualified, but achieved it with an unbeaten record (3 draws), becoming the first team to participate for the first time and maintain a clean record of losses in its three group stage matches since Senegal’s amazing World Cup appearance in 2002 (one win and two draws).
Saudi Green…clean sheets and offensive sterility
On the other hand, the group stage complex continued to haunt the Saudi national team. After its historic qualification to the round of 16 in its first appearance in 1994, “Al-Akhdar” failed to go beyond the first round in its last six appearances.
Despite the bitterness of the farewell, the Saudi national team emerged with a long-awaited defensive gain, as it finally succeeded in keeping a clean sheet for the first time in the World Cup since its famous victory over Belgium (1-0) in 1994. With this goalless draw, the Saudis ended a negative streak that lasted for 18 consecutive matches in which they conceded, which is the second longest such series in the history of the World Cup (behind Switzerland with 22 consecutive matches between 1934 and 1994).
However, this defensive solidity was offset by offensive numbers that were the worst in the history of Saudi Arabia’s seven participations in the tournament, as the team was content with shooting only 17 balls throughout the three matches, recording a total of “expected goals” (xG) of only 1.2.
Remarkable individual numbers in the match
The match witnessed the remarkable brilliance of a number of players who left their mark on the World Cup records:
- Veteran Cape Verde goalkeeper, Fosinha, made World Cup history after becoming the third goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet in more than one match after reaching the age of 40, joining goalkeeper legends Peter Shilton (3 matches) and Dino Zoff (2 matches).
- Cape Verde player Laros Duarte proved his importance as a strategic substitute, after he participated and created 3 scoring chances. In this year’s World Cup, only Turkey’s Can Uzun (against Paraguay) and Uruguayan Nicolas de la Cruz (against Saudi Arabia) surpassed him in creating chances as a substitute, with 4 opportunities each.
- Saudi midfielder Mohammed Kanno presented an exceptional physical performance, winning 12 duels during the match. It is the largest number of successful bilateral confrontations by a Saudi player in a World Cup match since Hussein Abdul Ghani (12 matches against Ukraine in 2006), and he is only surpassed in the history of Al-Akhdar’s participation in the history of the late Khamis Al-Owairan (13 matches against France in 1998).
