Al-Ittihad FC

Al-Ittihad enter this Saudi Pro League season as champions, and with the King's Cup added again in 2025. It is the kind of season Jeddah has come to expect from a club that measures itself against the record books as much as the table.

Supporters call it The Chief, a nickname that owes less to swagger than to arithmetic: Al-Ittihad has never changed its name or merged with a rival to get there.

The defining afternoon remains Seoul, 2004. Al-Ittihad had lost the first leg of the AFC Champions League final 3-1 to Buriram United. With Dragan Talaić only recently installed after the sacking of Tomislav Ivić, they came back to win the return leg 5-0 and take the trophy. They defended it the following year, Mohamed Kallon scoring twice in the final among his six goals in the tournament.

Two fixtures still decide how the season is read on the street. Matches against Al-Ahli, the other club from Jeddah, are the Sea Derby; matches against Al-Hilal of Riyadh are the Saudi Clasico.

The club itself dates to 26 December 1927, when a group of football enthusiasts in Jeddah met at the offices of a local broadcasting company and settled on a name built around the idea of unity — Al-Ittihad. Nearly a century on, it is still the same club, under the same name, that walked out of that room.