Of all the “Al Ittihads” on the North African and West Asian football scene, the club based in the port city of Jeddah on the Red Sea is the best known. Al Ittihad of Saudi Arabia, seven-time winners of the national league, are unquestionably the best club in the kingdom and celebrate their 80th anniversary this year. In 1927, a little more than three decades before the Saudi Arabian Football Federation was founded, a group of young football fans met in Jeddah with the aim of setting up a club. Their dream became a reality the following year. Al Ittihad are the only Saudi Arabian team to have enjoyed success at continental level, making their nickname the “Asian Tigers” a fitting one. They have won the AFC Champions League twice. Under their new Argentinian coach Gabriel Calderon, the restructured team is aiming for its third title.

The Colombian goalkeeping legend Rene Higuita is still playing at 41. The 1990 FIFA World Cup™ player’s current club Deportivo Rionegro has been promoted to the first division of the Colombian professional league. As a result of his impressive performances in the Rionegro colours, “El Loco” has received offers from two other first division clubs. Higuita has actually ended his career twice in order to take part in various Colombian reality TV shows. He has also had cosmetic surgery several times.

Gyula Grosics, the goalkeeper for Hungary in the 1954 FIFA World Cup™ final, had a brush with death in June. The Hungarian football association announced that the 82-year-old had been taken to hospital suffering from a ruptured lung, and that life-saving emergency surgery had been performed. “Grosics called me on that Sunday morning and said that he was having difficulty breathing again,” reported his doctor Istvan Penzes. “We had to insert a tube in his chest.” The former world-class goalkeeper has been admitted to hospital several times in recent months with lung problems. He had already had emergency life-saving surgery in January. Grosics and defender Jeno Buzanzsky are the only surviving members of the Hungarian golden team that lost 3-2 to a West German side led by Fritz Walter in the 1954 FIFA World Cup™ final in Berne.