Sabah Al-Salem

The old name still sticks in Kuwait City more than the new one does, and it is not hard to see why: Al-Arabi Stadium is what the ground was called when it hosted a Kuwait Cup final that the home nation still talks about. On 30 September 1980 this was the venue for the Asian Cup final, Kuwait against South Korea, and the hosts turned it on in front of 25,000, a crowd that stands as the largest the ground has ever held.

Now known as Sabah Al-Salem, and in fuller form sometimes billed as the Sabah Al-Salem Akram Al-Arabi Stadium, it has stood in the Al-Mansouriya district since 1979, tucked into a residential block between Abdullah Bahman Street and Cairo Street.

The natural grass pitch and the modest surrounds give it the feel of a club ground that happened to host a continental final rather than a purpose-built showpiece, and that is largely the point: everything about the place still points back to one autumn evening more than four decades ago.