Fight on All Fronts: Rodgers prepping Al Qadsiah for major season | OneFootball

Without doubt, Al Qadsiah were one of the stories of 2026 in the Roshn Saudi League.

The East Coast club were simply superb following Brendan Rodgers’ appointment in December, the former Celtic and Liverpool manager masterminding a club-record, 17-match unbeaten league run.

In the end, Al Qadsiah lost only once in Rodgers’ 25 RSL matches in charge, improving on the previous season’s fifth-placed finish by coming home in fourth.

Indeed, no team scored more since Rodgers’ arrival in the Saudi top flight than Al Qadsiah’s 67 goals.

So, with the 2026-27 RSL kicking off next month and the club soon to move into the new, state-of-the-art Aramco Stadium, there really are exciting times ahead for the upward-trending Al Khobar outfit.

Just ask Rodgers himself, with the Northern Irishman taking time out from the club's training camp in Girona, Spain, to talk 2026-27 preparations and objectives for a season that sees Al Qadsiah compete on four fronts - including a first AFC Asian Champion League Elite campaign.

On early preseason preps

"At this stage of our preseason, we want to make the team as fit as we possibly can,” Rodgers told Al Qadsiah’s official media channels. "Now our aim to be as fit as we possibly can because that's how we have to play our football.

"Hopefully in the second half of last season, you could see the intensity and how we want to work. So our physical conditioning is really, really important for that. And we hope that we can get a really, really good base for the season here physically.

"We also reintroduce our playing style and our way of working. We have some new players coming in. We have some players on loan coming back. So it's reintroducing a lot of the principles of our game and overall, also off the field, to bond and be together and find those connections."

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On youth’s chance to impress

"For any young player, if you're travelling with the first team, it's always an opportunity. Many times in my career, a young player has trained with me in preseason, and they end up being in the first team.

"So it's an opportunity for them to shine, to show they can cope with the demands of the first team and also to gain great experience."

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On club's FIFA World Cup stars

"It won't have any effect. Of course, we would love to have everyone here so we could all be concentrated at the same time. But naturally we've had players at the World Cup who also need rest, having been training and working and playing straight after our season finished.

"So we have to accept that that's where they are at. Once they finish their World Cup, they will have a good rest and then they will rejoin the group.

"So, yeah, ideally you would have everyone here, but it's not always ideal, especially in World Cup year. The main objective, of course, is to put a signpost in the ground so that everyone knows exactly which way we are travelling."

On building on last season

"We created that, like I said before, a really, really good base of the last six months. Now we come here to prepare the team and the club to make the next step.

"Clearly next year we have four opportunities to win a trophy; we would love to be able to do that. But also, as an individual, I want the players to understand we want to help them improve as players because each year you play, you want to continually improve and develop.

"So those are the main aims of our preseason camp: setting out the signpost to go forward and making it a really good start."

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On what fans can expect

"The message to the fans is that we are going to work really, really hard over the course of this preseason. We thank them for their backing they gave us last year and we hope they were really pleased with the performances that we were able to show…

"And how we finished the season with five wins out of five and two big wins against some big teams, and hopefully they can be excited about this season.

"And we are all looking forward to doing the very best we possibly can to make them happy, to try and bring a trophy to them for them to support. And, yeah, we move to our new stadium next year as well. So there’s lots of excitement ahead for us all."