As Bahrain and the UAE battle it out on the pitch in their Group H game of the 2026 Fifa World Cup Asian Qualifiers at the Bahrain National Stadium tonight, Husain Rashed Husain will be on a very special Fifa assignment inside the stadium.
Head of the Bahrain Basketball Association’s (BBA) media centre and a sports journalist with Arabic-language daily Al Watan, Husain has been selected to be a Fifa Stadium Data Collector (FSDC) – a new football data collection process, that has been introduced by the sport’s governing body in the 2026 Fifa World Cup Qualifiers that are taking place around the world, for the purposes of gathering live data and validating official data.
“I am very happy because I am the only Bahraini in this new programme,” Husain told the GDN.
“I participated in an online workshop held by Fifa, was duly trained after being selected as a FSDC and my very first assignment is tonight: the Bahrain-UAE game.
“My brief is to record all that happens in the game – line-ups, substitutions, goals, yellow and red cards, etc – and, after the match, validate all the data with the match referee, in the presence of the match commissioner before distributing the match report to different parties electronically.”
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