Even before Cristiano Ronaldo’s close-range shot had hit the back of net, the commentator had begun shouting. “Allllllllaaaaaaah!!!!” exclaimed Amer al-Khudhiri, an Omani football announcer for BeIN Sports, as the Portugal star scored his first goal of the 2026 World Cup against Uzbekistan on Tuesday.
He took a deep breath and then began his soliloquy. “I knew you were coming for revenge. I knew you would answer everyone, the world, the World Cup, the doubters, those who have lost their memory,” al-Khudhiri said. “Oh history, put Ronaldo here as Portgual’s all-time top scorer, through all its history. Allah, Allah, Allah!”
Al-Khudhiri waxed philosophical for more than a minute and a half. “I knew my night would be long and I knew my words might fail me, and I knew my vocal cords might break, and yet I am ready for that, happy, embracing heaven, O Ronaldo,” he said, his voice growing hoarse towards the end.
With a record number of Middle Eastern teams at the 2026 World Cup, more fans than ever are tuning in across the region. But it is Arab football announcers and their commentary, which verges on poetry, rather than the players, who are stealing the show.
From crowded seaside cafes in Lebanon, where excited fans stretch the limits of tired plastic chairs, to air-conditioned restaurants in the Gulf, the booming voices of commentators such as al-Khudhiri and Tunisia’s Issam Chaouali are a soundtrack to the action.
“The language does more than heighten the drama, it somehow stretches time. A two-second sequence becomes a full paragraph. The anticipation becomes the thing you are consuming, not only the goal,” said Hazar al-Kilani, 27, a public relations manager based in Doha.
Clips of football matches often go viral in the Arab world not only for good play but also the drama of the commentary that accompanies it. Watching that commentary in real time motivates even those who are not usually World Cup fans.
Cherly Abou Chabke, 25, a reporter for a Lebanese TV station, said: “We know how to put on a show, and I feel like even if you don’t understand football and you’re watching the game, hearing this beautiful commentary that basically sounds like a love letter to football, you’re bound to get excited.”
Commentators such as Chaouali are famed for their passionate coverage, breaking with the clinical play-by-play expected in the English-language media world. They put audiences on the edge of their seats, their voices rising in pitch and pace as a player approaches goal.
After Lionel Messi’s record 17th World Cup goal, scored against Austria, the Yemeni commentator Hassan al-Aidarous put his rhetorical skills on display.
“Let history open its arms. Let the world bear witness to this moment. Let glory be etched for ever into eternity. I do not call you Leo, I call you history itself!” he said. “For if glory has a king, then you are the king of glory. If records have a king, then you are the king of records. And if legends have a leader, then you are the leader of legends throughout all the ages.”
Arabic commentary is genre-breaking. Announcers lead fans on winding journeys, reacting with sorrow when a chance is missed, shouting with passion when a goals is scored, or giving love advice when the opportunity presents itself.
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Key to the commentary is Arabic itself. The Middle East has a long oral tradition in which people would sit for hours and compete in improvised poetry, showing their command of a rich language that which is said to have as many as 500 different ways of saying “lion”.
Similar to those improvised poetry sessions, part of the fun of watching football in Arabic is the creativity of the commentators, who take joy in their mastery of the language. Chaouali, one of the Arab world’s most famous commentators, studied philology before becoming a broadcaster.
Al-Kilani said: “Arabic has a classical science of eloquence, balagha, and a literary culture that has placed the poet at its centre since the pre-Islamic odes … Commentary stepped into a seat that has already existed.”
Even those who grew up in multilingual households agreed that watching football in Arabic is an entirely different experience.
“If I have the option of watching the game in French, Arabic or English, I won’t think twice about it. I automatically choose the Arabic one,” said Abou Chabke. “Arab literature is a cornerstone of our identity and the commentators know how to build on that very well.”
Above all else, Arab commentators provide a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. Voices such as those of Chaouali and Algeria’s Hafid Derradji have followed people from their parents’ living rooms to their own.
“Chaouali’s voice represents the sound of World Cup summers to many of us,” al-Kilani said. “It belongs to the heat, to the whole family gathered in one room, to a match playing while that voice does what it has always done, which is to lift an ordinary goal into something monumental.”