As the local football season has come to an end last Friday, Markus Paqueta, the manager of the national team, has announced what’s supposed to be his final choice of players who would represent Saudi Arabia in the FIFA World Cup this summer in Germany. So, I thought it would be fun if I posted the names of my favorite 23, hoping you would post your favorites too (this is not only for Saudis; if you are a football fan you can post your choice of players for your favorite team and tag others to do the same too).

Goalkeepers:
Mohammed Al Deaie (Al Hilal); Mabrouk Zayed (Al Ittihad); A’adel Al Musaileem (Al Ahli).

Defenders:
Ahmed Al Dokhi, Hamad Al Montasheri, Usama Al Muwallad (Al Ittiad); Abdul-Aziz Al Khathran (Al Hilal); Kamil Al Mousa (Al Wehda); Ahmed Al Bahri (Al Ittifaq); Hussain Abdul-Ghani, Mohammed Masa’ad (Al Ahli).

Midfielders:
Khaled Azeez, Omar Al Ghamdi, Abdul-Lateef Al Ghannam, Nawaf Al Temyat, Mohammed Al Shelhoub (Al Hilal); Saud Kareeri, Mohammed Nour (Al Ittihad); Taiseer Al Jasim (Al Ahli)

Forwards:
Sami Al Jaber, Yassir Al Qahtani, Ahmed Al Swaileh (Al Hilal); Sa’ad Al Harthi (Al Nassr).

I know that most of Saudi bloggers out there are females, but I thought there might be a few fellow bloggers and football fans who would enjoy this. So, I’d like to tag Al Mohareb, Shahed, and all interested football fans.

P.S. Some of the players mentioned above were on loan to other teams during this season, but I’ve decided to put the names of their original teams here. Is it surprising that my choice contains no players from Al Shabab, the winners of the Saudi league title for this season?

Review: Hind Wa Al Askar by Badria Al Bisher (Arabic).

Take a look at the header of this blog. Yep, you’re right: it’s SAUDIJEANS.ORG! I’ve recently registered the domain, so now you can reach Saudi Jeans using the new URL.

One more thing: comments on this blog are not moderated; so you don’t need my permission to publish yours here. I have never deleted any comment before, no matter how harsh it was, and I hope I’ll never have to (although that seems impossible these days).

Many readers have been complaining that they can’t add their comments to posts on this blog. Before using the word verification system, there was no such problems, but I had to turn it on because I received a huge amount of spam comments, and here where troubles began. I said then that users of Internet Explorer might face such troubles, and I even added a note about this to the comments form later. However, I think that wasn’t enough as most people still use this piece of crap called IE, so from now on you can find an alternative link to add comments within the form that would take you to the original Blogger comments page. I think this will solve it for now, until the guys at Microsoft improve their crappy browser.

Donna Abu-Nasr describes eating out in Riyadh as “an unusual experience,” which is quite true. Luckily, we, guys, don’t have to live in what I’d like to call The Hell of Partitions when we dine out, but I really feel sorry for those who do. Abu-Nasr did not even talk about the increasing number of restaurants in Riyadh that prohibit females without a male guardian (mahram), which is also awful and shameful. It is really depressing when something as simple as dining out becomes a police matter.

Here is a story from the NY Times on why stars give their babies weird names. I’m no star, but I can tell for sure that I’m not going to name my children some ordinary names. How about Hamza? Al Mothanna? Ward (for a boy)?