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JEDDAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz will attend the final match and hand over the trophy to the winner of the King's Cup football tournament Thursday night at King Abdullah Sports City stadium in Jeddah.
The match is set for 8:30 p.m. with Riyadh-based Al-Hilal aiming to win back-to-back titles against Al-Ahli of Jeddah having defeated Al-Nasr, another Riyadh-based club, in last year's final.
The championship that started in 1957 included only teams of the Western Region clubs and was won by Makkah’s team Al-Wehda.
The tournament format then was points system, where teams that had the most points qualified for a three-group league. The three leading teams, in addition to a team qualifying by draw, play knockout last-four matches. Central region teams started participating in the championship in 1961 with one of them, Al-Hilal, winning the cup. Two years after that, Eastern Province teams joined the competition, with Al-Ettifaq being the first of the region to win the trophy in 1968.
In 1976, the championship format was changed to knock-out, which is being followed to date. Since 2013, the tournament has been expanded to include all 153 clubs in the Kingdom.
Ahli and Jeddah's Al-Ittihad are the top two teams with the most number of cups won at 12 and 8 respectively, followed by Hilal at 7, Nasr at 6 and Al-Shabab at 3. Ettifaq and Wehda each have two titles.