The team sheet dropped. The anger followed.
Al-Riyadh announced their squad on Friday for the Roshn League trip to Al-Ahli at Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Sports City Stadium, and one name was missing that nobody expected to be absent: Mahmoud Hassan “Trezeguet”.
No Egyptian winger. No explanation.
On the club’s official X account, the starting XI and substitutes appeared as usual. The reaction was anything but. Al-Riyadh fans flooded the comments, demanding to know why their summer star had vanished from the list after featuring prominently in the build-up to the game.
The confusion had a clear trigger. Only on Thursday, the club had shared images from the final training session before the Al-Ahli match. Trezeguet was there, involved, looking part of the plan. Nothing in those pictures hinted at a problem.
So when his name disappeared overnight, suspicion and irritation filled the gap. Supporters wanted clarity and weren’t getting it from the club channels.
The answer came from the stadium, not the dressing room. Reporting from Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Sports City Stadium, the correspondent for “Thmanyah”, the broadcaster of the Saudi league, confirmed that Trezeguet had been ruled out through injury. No drama, no disciplinary issue. Just an untimely physical setback.
It still stings for Al-Riyadh.
Trezeguet only joined the club in the current summer transfer window, arriving from Egypt’s Al-Ahly after a single season there. His signing carried weight: a marquee wide player expected to carry a significant share of the attacking threat in a demanding Roshn League campaign.
Now, on a night when Al-Riyadh needed all the quality they could muster away to Al-Ahli, they had to step out without the man many fans already see as their difference-maker.
