WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : Saudis’ Owairan Has the Run of the Place : Group F: Midfielder beats four defenders on dazzling 65-yard scoring jaunt that puts his team into second round. Belgium drops to third.
When Saeed Al Owairan had finished a 65-yard run that will be relived for years, scoring a goal that children will be scoring in their back yards forever, he did the only appropriate thing.
He saw the fans standing and screaming as if they had just seen a movie star. He saw that this was, after all, America.
So instead of lifting his hands to Allah like his Saudi Arabian teammates, he ran to a corner of the field where he was by himself.
Once there, he boogied.
“It was a dance to say to the world, ‘Here we are,’ ” Owairan said after his team’s stunning 1-0 victory over previously unbeaten Belgium.
The world no longer needs reminding. Owairan’s memorable score in the sixth minute before 52,959 at RFK Stadium enabled the Saudis to advance to the second round in their first World Cup finals appearance.
With their only loss in three games coming in the final five minutes to the Netherlands, the Saudis have become this tournament’s lucky charm.
They face powerful Sweden on Sunday in Dallas in what appears to be another mismatch. This, of course, only means trouble for Sweden.
“Who knows what happens?” forward Sami Al Jaber said with a smile. “This is football. This is one tournament. There are no big teams or small teams.”
There are only teams that can have their will stolen from them in 10 dazzling seconds. This is what happened to Belgium, which fell from first place to third in its group and now faces a probable second-round game against defending champion Germany.
That chore was supposed to go to the Saudis. But there was that matter of 10 seconds.
That was all the time Owairan needed to make memories with a scoring run in which he eluded four defenders and a goalkeeper. They were part of the only World Cup defense that had yet to allow a score.
“An amazing goal, just amazing,” said Franky Van der Elst, Belgian midfielder. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
You know when Charles Barkley orders his teammates to the side of the court so he can face a man one-on-one? That was this.
Except it was one-on-five. Covering two basketball courts.
The closest soccer comparison anyone could muster was to Argentina’s Diego Maradona and his two long scoring runs in the 1986 World Cup.
But that was Maradona, and this was, well, a 26-year-old midfielder who is best known for his bad defense.
His defense was so bad, in fact, that coaches didn’t even trust him to remain on the field Wednesday for more than 61 of the 90 minutes.
But all he needed were those 10 seconds.
The run started when Owairan took a pass from Hamzah Saleh about 10 yards into the Saudi side of the field. The Belgian defense spread out to cover Saleh and dangerous Majed Mohammed, leaving a seam down the middle.
Owairan found that seam and began to sprint.
He sprinted through a sliding tackle attempt by Dirk Medved. He sprinted over another tackle attempt by Michel De Wolf.
Nearing the penalty box, he juked Rudy Smidts and kept sprinting.
Fifteen yards from the goal, he leaped over a final tackle attempt by Philippe Albert and kicked the ball toward the far post while falling in the other direction.
That the ball went in is something he still doesn’t believe.
“I cannot describe what happened to me,” Owairan said. “It is beyond words.”
The Belgians certainly talked about it, with a fervor usually associated with somebody who has witnessed something far more serious. Say, an unidentified flying object.
“We let him go, and go, and go, and go,” said Belgian captain Georges Grun, who sat out this game because he was worried about picking up a second yellow card and being suspended from the first second-round match.
“Normally, a player cannot run that far,” Grun said. “But nobody tackled him. We were too confident. We have to play harder.”
The Belgians played hard for the rest of the first half, recording 14 of the 19 shots taken in the half. They had 12 second-half shots, most of them badly missed headers or kicks that landed in the 10th row.
“They were very aggressive and very fast, very fast,” Van der Elst said. “In the locker room, we never think that anything like this can happen.”
The Saudis have become dangerous because they are starting to believe something like this always happens.
Surrounded by hot lights and cameras and questioners yelling at him in a variety of languages, Owairan suddenly doubled over in laughter.
“He said when he started this game, he was playing in his back yard,” an interpreter explained. “That’s funny now, isn’t it?”
