Salisbury to spend five days in Kuwait to face Al Qadsia before FA Cup tie on Saturday
Salisbury will spend five days in Kuwait, where they are scheduled to play Al Qadsia on Wednesday before returning to face Dulwich Hamlet in the FA Cup third qualifying round on Saturday.
After Saturday's 2-0 win against Folkestone Invicta at The Mac Stadium, Salisbury players and coaches embraced fans in the Andrews Terrace and were met with the chant "Kuwait away ole, ole." "Straight away we all said, 'yeah, we're all in," explains Salisbury player Luke Russe. "It's a unique opportunity and as players, we are so thankful to everybody involved in making this trip happen. I've been involved in this level for a long time now and I've never had an experience like it."
The five-day trip includes a midweek match against Al Qadsia, described in the club release as one of Kuwait's most successful teams with more than 50 trophies, played at the Mohammad Al-Hamad Stadium, which holds 22,000 spectators—more than five times the capacity of The Mac. The squad are due back on Thursday to prepare for Saturday's FA Cup third qualifying round fixture.
The visit is part of Salisbury's ongoing link with Kuwait under owner Ali Alhamad, who purchased the club in 2025, and the club says it hopes the trip will drive commercial growth while offering players exposure to a different footballing environment and culture. Players are scheduled to visit local restaurants, try local food and coffee, visit schools and universities, and hold a question and answer session aimed at explaining how an English football club operates from the perspective of owner Alhamad. "It will help the players themselves with opening up their horizons into different cultures, different countries, experiencing other footballing nations and other styles of football," he says.
Interest in Salisbury in Kuwait is reflected in the club's commercial ties: four of the club's sponsors are from Kuwait, including the front-of-shirt sponsor for a company that created the country's first Sharia-compliant digital bank and a training-kit partner that is a popular Acai company sold only in Kuwait. The club's official Arabic Instagram account has more than 14,000 followers, only slightly fewer than the English profile, and when the squad arrived they were greeted by a small group of fans while school children interacted with them "as if they were Premier League players." "I would even go further than saying that Salisbury in Kuwait is bigger than many of the Premier League teams in the UK," says Alhamad. "So I am not exaggerating when I do say that it is a huge name in Kuwait but what's more important than the size is we are contributing a lot to the local community here in Kuwait and to the children and the future of the football in Kuwait. "Salisbury really is an integral part of opening those avenues and helping the youth here to be better in all the aspects we're looking for."
All members of the squad, except Jaiden Bartolo who is on international duty, agreed to travel within an hour, the club said, and the financial proceeds from ticket sales and advertising during the trip will go to Salisbury. The club has also organised a summer camp in Kuwait and ran a trial session where the top three players trained with the first team during pre-season. "It's quite simple in my mind. If you do what other people do, you'll just get the same results everyone else does," Alhamad says. "Football in England, especially in the non-league, is a brutal business. So just throwing in money to the football club with the aim of getting promotion is fool's gold, in my opinion. "The right way to do it is to build it properly all the way from the bottom and if you just limit yourself to one market, which is the city or town that you are in, that is pretty limited. "With social media and the avenues we have, such as being in Kuwait and the Gulf and Arab regions. That's a huge untapped market that is thirsty for English football."
Alhamad said part of the visit's purpose is to educate local fans about the quality of non-league football: "People are not properly educated in the fact that the non-league is actually a really high quality and that is also an indirect goal of mine with this match," he added. "We're here to show them, you're belittling, playing the sixth tier of English football, the second step of the English non-league. "We'll show you what we have and you never know, maybe the sixth tier of English football will beat the top tier on the biggest team in Kuwait." Al Qadsia are noted in the club release as one of the most successful teams in Kuwait, having won a continental tournament in 2014, and Salisbury's leadership say the engagement in Kuwait provides an opportunity uncommon for a National League South club.
Salisbury return from Kuwait on Thursday to prepare for the FA Cup third qualifying round match against Dulwich Hamlet on Saturday, and owner Ali Alhamad reiterated his commitment to the club's local roots: "I have grown to love it and love the people of Salisbury and the towns around it," he says. "It's a great place to be. And that's what I'm really focusing on not just in a trip here in Kuwait, also in our heart and soul, our fans, our community, which is Salisbury."
