Al-Ittihad Tune Up Against a First-Division Side Before the Clasico: A Quiet Preparation and Untested Variables

I have seen this many times over more than thirty years standing at the edge of the pitch: a team on an unbeaten run, sitting second, one point off the top, and the coaching staff decide to give their players a friendly against a lower-division opponent. Not a big name. Not a tense dress rehearsal. Just a Saturday afternoon at home in Jeddah, nine days before the trip to Riyadh. Al-Ittihad confirmed they will face Al-Wehda, a Saudi First Division League side, to warm up ahead of their meeting with Al-Hilal. The Clasico is set for October 10, at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. That is all that has been announced. No tactical board, no expected-goals figures, no projected lineup. Just a short club statement, and behind it an entire way of thinking about football. I stand at the end of the corridor, hearing clearly the sigh of an era. At this age, I have seen big clubs choose small opponents to keep their rhythm before a decisive match more than once. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. What decides the outcome is not the name of the opponent, but what the team wants to repeat. To understand why a friendly against a First Division side is worth discussing, it must be placed in the proper context of the Roshn League - the commercial name of Saudi Arabia's top flight. After the seventh round, Al-Ittihad sit second on 17 points, one point behind leaders Al-Hilal. They are the only team yet to lose a match this season. That one-point gap sounds small, but it shapes the entire race. A win in the eighth round would lift Al-Ittihad to the top of the table. A defeat would stretch the gap to four points, and in a league whose competitiveness keeps rising, four points is not an easy margin to close. This is the kind of match analysts call a "six-pointer" - a game between direct rivals where the result swings the points gap in both directions. The meeting between Al-Ittihad and Al-Hilal is no ordinary fixture. These are two traditional powers of Saudi football, and the organisers have billed it as the standout fixture of the eighth round. The media call it a Clasico - a term borrowed from Spanish football, but enough to convey its weight. The rivalry between the two is not new, but it is rekindled every time both sit in the leading group. What makes this round even more intriguing is that Al-Hilal have just lost 2-0 to Neom. The leaders remain top, but that fracture shows they are not invincible. Meanwhile, Al-Ittihad have kept their unbeaten run intact. The gap between the two on the table is one point, but the psychological gap may be larger or smaller depending on how each side reads its own defeat and its own streak. The friendly against Al-Wehda, then, must be read as a deliberate choice. Al-Ittihad's coaching staff picked an opponent a tier below, at home, nine days before the big match. In elite football, this is how you control variables. When you enter a friendly, what matters is not winning, but how many variables you can control. A lower-tier opponent lets a team test attacking combinations, adjust the distance between lines, and, most importantly, give key players moderate-intensity minutes so they do not lose their feel for the ball. This is calculated repetition, not a test of wits. Pressure does not sit on the shoulders; it sits in the way they tie their boots. I learned that during my years in Milan. A player who walks out with his laces tied tighter than usual, or looser than usual, is telling you something about his state. In a friendly with no points at stake, those signals are even clearer, because nothing hides them. Over more than thirty years watching football, I have learned that an unbeaten team is not unbeaten by accident. Behind such a run is a smoothly operating system: players understand their roles, the coaching staff maintain stability, and the dressing room has no dissenting voice. Al-Ittihad have that. But precisely for that reason, the Clasico is a real test. An unbeaten run against mid-tier opponents guarantees nothing when you must travel to Kingdom Arena as the away side. This is the point to stress: the friendly against Al-Wehda takes place at Al-Ittihad's stadium in Jeddah, while the Clasico takes place at Al-Hilal's ground in Riyadh. That means the team is not rehearsing for the environment it is about to enter. The pressure of the stands, the atmosphere of an away ground, the refereeing decisions in front of tens of thousands - nothing about that afternoon in Jeddah replicates any of it. This is where I usually pause longer than others. When a team schedules a home friendly before a big away match, what is it optimising for? It is optimising for safety. A familiar ground, a familiar pitch, a familiar crowd, no travel to disrupt the routine. But that safety can open a gap: the team walks into Kingdom Arena without having prepared for going behind in front of a hostile crowd. This does not mean their choice is wrong. It only means there is one variable left untested. On results, Al-Ittihad are on track. Seventeen points from seven rounds, unbeaten, one point off the top - that is the start any coaching staff would want. But football is not confined to the table. What I have observed across their matches points to something else: unbeaten teams tend to carry a particular kind of pressure. With each round that passes, the streak becomes an invisible burden. Players start playing to protect rather than to win. That is when a beautiful run can turn into a trap. Al-Hilal, as leaders, carry their own burden. The defeat to Neom is a fracture, but it can also be a wake-up call. Big clubs tend to respond forcefully after a loss, and they will enter the Clasico with the mindset of a side wanting to prove something. The combination of the leader's pressure and the hunger for recovery creates a situation Al-Ittihad cannot easily predict. I also noticed a small operational detail. The fact that Al-Ittihad can arrange a private friendly, at the right time, against the right opponent, points to a certain degree of autonomy and resources. In modern football, a crowded calendar makes it no simple matter to find an opponent willing to play a friendly in the exact week you need one. It is a detail that reveals how a club operates, even though it never appears on the scoreboard. One more factor is rarely mentioned: early October often coincides with an international break. The phenomenon the trade calls the "FIFA virus" - players returning tired or injured after international travel and matches - can directly affect squad quality in the Clasico. The friendly against Al-Wehda, in this case, may be a way for the coaching staff to gauge the true condition of key players before making final decisions. In the broader picture, the rise of clubs like Neom is changing the structure of the Roshn League. When an emerging side can beat the league leaders, the title is no longer a two-horse race. This creates a competitive environment in which every point is worth more, and every match carries greater risk. For Al-Ittihad, that means their unbeaten run is threatened by Al-Hilal, and by the rest of the league. I follow Saudi football from Milan, through the lens of someone long accustomed to the pace and workings of European football. What draws my attention is how clubs here are gradually learning meticulousness in preparation. Al-Ittihad arranging a friendly at the right time for the right purpose is one example. This is the kind of thinking I once saw at Italian clubs during the years they dominated Europe: preparation is a matter of the entire week before, not only of match day. Yet that meticulousness has its limits. Controlling variables does not mean controlling outcomes. The outside view easily falls into two extremes. One treats the friendly against a First Division side as complacency, a sign that Al-Ittihad are taking the Clasico lightly. The other treats it as a masterstroke, a calculating move. Both miss the most important thing. What is missed lies elsewhere: a friendly against a lower-tier opponent cannot replicate the intensity Al-Hilal will generate. Al-Wehda will not press like Al-Hilal, will not close ranks as quickly as Al-Hilal, will not punish a small mistake in an instant. If Al-Ittihad's coaching staff are seeking intensity preparation, they have chosen the wrong opponent. If they are seeking tactical repetition and preservation of energy, the choice makes sense. The value of this friendly lies elsewhere. It answers the question of the state in which Al-Ittihad want to enter the Clasico: fresh in fitness, clear in tactics, and not worn down by a tense dress rehearsal. A team that keeps those things will be more confident than one drained before the big day. There is another possibility the media rarely mention: this friendly may be a chance to integrate players returning from international duty, or to test lineup options the coaching staff would rather not reveal in competitive matches. A match with no tense points at stake is the ideal place to do that. But it also means the game may be played at a low tempo, lacking competitiveness, and failing to generate the buzz needed before a big match. I do not write down what they say. I remember what they leave unsaid. And here, the most notable silence is that no one mentions the away factor. All the discussion revolves around the lower-tier opponent, around whether a friendly should be played at all. No one asks: what has the team prepared for having to play at Kingdom Arena? So the thing worth watching in the coming days is how Al-Ittihad enter the friendly, not its result. Who rests, who starts, and who leaves the pitch early. Those choices will say more than any statement from the coaching staff. When the stadium is empty, I finally understand what applause really is. And when the friendly ends, when the players walk off, I will look at how they walk - the only thing that tells the truth about a team's state before a big match. The race for the Roshn League summit may be shaped on October 10. But it began on a Saturday afternoon in Jeddah, where an unbeaten team chose to play a lower-division side to remind itself: preparation lies in yourself, not in the opponent.