Al-Fateh Stadium

Al-Fateh's ground spent most of its life as an afterthought — an athletics track with football pencilled in around it, holding barely 3,500 people. That changed between 2021 and 2023, when the whole site was stripped back: the running lane torn out, new stands raised on three sides, a fresh roof fitted over the top. What came out the other end was a purpose-built football ground for well over ten thousand, the kind of number the old bowl never got close to.

The reopening carried some weight of its own. Saudi Arabia hosted Pakistan there in a World Cup qualifier in November 2023, and won 4-0, before the league programme moved in a few days later. For a stadium in Al-Hofuf that had spent nearly two decades as a track-and-field venue with football tolerated on it, that was the moment it became something else.

It sits in the Sports City area, on Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Street, and carries the name of the club it houses, Al-Fateh SC, rather than any sponsor. There is an older Prince Abdullah bin Jalawi Stadium in the same city that gets confused with it, though the two are not the same ground. The pitch is natural grass, unremarkable in itself, but it is the one part of the venue that never needed rebuilding.