Al-Qadsiah FC

What connects one of Islam’s greatest battles, the British Empire and…. Brendan Rodgers?

A team currently sitting 4th in the Saudi Pro-League has an absolutely incredible story to tell… so let’s #GetTheBadgeIn and see what we can learn from Brendan Rodgers’ Al-Qadsiah FC.

At first glance their badge looks like a very simple, modern and minimalist logo, but in fact it is carrying a huge amount of history behind the brand. Al-Qadsiah’s identity strips things back visually, but what it represents – place, memory, migration, and ambition – is a fascinating story.

On the pitch, Al-Qadsiah FC have made it clear they are serious about being one of the big beasts of the Middle East – and global - football. The squad blends experience with promise. Former Real Madrid defender Nacho Fernández brings leadership and elite-level calm at the back, while exciting young Ghanaian talent Christopher Bonsu Baah adds pace and flair going forward. Guiding it all is Brendan Rodgers, whose CV includes Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester City. Behind it all sits the world’s richest oil company, Aramco.

The badge itself is built around the letters QAD, set at a sharp slant and rendered in a custom typeface used consistently across the club’s wider brand (this actually took me ages to spot – even when I was told – watch the video here to see it more clearly: https://www.genebranding.com/qadsiah-scc-2/). It is clean, confident, and instantly recognisable. The slanted angle of the badge mirrors the geographic angle and footprint of Al Khobar itself, grounding the club visually in its home city. The shield shape from its old badge remains, but everything else has been refined to give it a more modern aesthetic.

That shield matters. The previous crest (pictured here) held a knight on horseback, sword raised, shield to his side. The reason for that knight lies in the club’s identity and nickname: Fares Al Sharqiyah (Knight of the East) and Fakhr Al Sharqiyah (Pride of the Eastern Province). These names are rooted in history, specifically the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah – from where the club obviously takes its name. That battle, in 636 CE, was only 4 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Those years after his death were ones of early turmoil for the new religion – after the passing of the Prophet people wondered if this newcomer to the world stage would quietly slip back into the deserts.

So, the new religion needed a statement win. At al-Qadisiyyah it got one. That battle mattered because it was against the Sassanian Persian Empire, one of the strongest powers of its age. It opened the way into Persia, helped Islam spread across the region, shifted power away from Byzantine and Persian dominance, and shaped the early Islamic world that followed. Naming a club after Qadisiyyah is a statement. It is like a British team calling itself Agincourt, Waterloo, or Trafalgar. That Al-Qadsiah face out towards the Arabian Gulf – peering over the horizon towards the same Persian lands once defeated – almost certainly isn’t a coincidence.

And what were the early Islamic forces famed for? Horsemen. Lots of them. Fast, ferocious and with the ability to trek far into the desert before sweeping back in behind the enemy lines. A tactic later employed by the British Long Range Desert Group in the Second World War (who went on to become the SAS). A technique mastered by the horsemen of Arabia. By the knights of the East.

As if the name itself were not defiant enough, the city behind the club adds another layer. Modern Al Khobar was built largely on the back of the migration of the Dawasir tribe. In 1923, Britain did not physically expel the Dawasir from Bahrain, but it created conditions that pushed them to leave. British authorities tightened control, removed the old ruler Isa bin Ali, stripped tribes of legal and economic privileges, imposed new courts and policing, in a bid to westernise the realm. Rather than submit, many Dawasir chose to leave Bahrain and resettle on the Saudi coast with the permission of King Abdulaziz. That movement laid the foundations of Khobar and Dammam.

Today, Al Khobar still carries traces of that past. Old market streets like Suwaiket sit alongside glass towers, malls, and seafront developments. More recently the city was once the original port used by Saudi Aramco to export oil, and it is no accident that the club is now owned outright by the same oil giant. Just to the north runs the King Fahd Causeway, the four-lane link to Bahrain, allowing the descendants of those displaced tribes to cross back to ancestral lands with ease.

Al-Qadsiah’s badge may look simple and clear cut. Its story is anything but. Behind the clean lines is a club shaped by battle, migration, oil, and ambition – and a reminder that sometimes the most minimalist of designs can have the most maximalist of histories.