There’s a reason why Hussein Sayed plays at full-back and not up front because his accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.
Sayed was terrified that he’d be punished after he accidentally hit referee Mark Clattenburg in the face with a water bottle during his side’s 1-1 draw with Al Feiha on Saturday.
The Al-Ettifaq left-back was trying to toss a bottle back to a member of staff while a teammate received medical attention but his ambitious attempt was way off and it connected with the side of Clattenburg’s head.
It definitely looked like Clattenburg, who took up a position as Saudi Arabia’s Head of Refereeing last season, felt the full brunt of the projectile but he toughed through it as Sayed rushed over to give him an apologetic embrace.
Mark Clattenburg getting hit in the face with a water bottle in #SaudiArabia. There’s a couple of seconds when he does that ‘no, I’m fine, FINE’ thing when you can tell he really just wants to cry. pic.twitter.com/LtqclgcTIE
— Mark Evans (@Evs_Dubai) February 12, 2018
The official laughed it off as he pretended to book the player for the offence before getting the game back underway.
Clattenburg recently revealed that Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho played a significant role in his decision to step away from officiating in the Premier League.
Speaking on the Men in Blazers podcast, Clattenburg explained how a bollocking from Mourinho after a game at the Britannia Stadium persuaded him to leave England behind.
“I was refereeing the game when Wayne Rooney broke Bobby Charlton’s record and Mourinho came into my dressing room and he was unhappy about a handball penalty that I didn’t give,” Clattenburg said.
“I’d walked off that pitch at Stoke, which was always the coldest stadium, it was always wet and miserable, and refereeing Man United was never an easy match.
"I allowed them to self-destruct." https://t.co/xtqvxF340g
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) December 4, 2017
“To come off that match it felt immense that I’d actually had a good performance, and for him to come into my dressing room and criticise my performance for a handball that I’d seen, that had clearly come off his chest, I knew that I was right but he’d put a seed of doubt into my mind.
“I drove home 250 miles thinking I’d made a big error, my wife knew my attitude had changed, and I thought to myself, ‘Do I really want to be a part of this anymore? Do I really want to referee?’
“And I went soul-searching, I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I used to and I had to get out.”
