Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Moscow: Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) President, has sent his best wishes to Saudi Arabia following the incident where the plane carrying the nation's 2018 FIFA World Cup squad suffered a fire in one of its engines on Monday.
The squad was on its way to Rostov-on-Don for their next Group A match against Uruguay on Wednesday.
The Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF) said in a statement it "would like to reassure everyone that all the Saudi national team players are safe, after a technical failure in one of the airplane engines (right) that has just landed in Rostov-on-Don airport, and now they're heading to their residence safely."
One of the Saudi players, Hatan Bahbir, said in a video on the Federation's Twitter account: "We arrived safely and we are all fine... it was a simple malfunction'."
Saudi Arabia opened their 2018 FIFA World Cup campaign with a 5-0 defeat to hosts Russia on June 14.