Al Hilal SFC
association football club in Saudi Arabia
Al-Hilal Saudi Football Club (Arabic: نادي الهلال السعودي) commonly known simply as Al-Hilal, is a Saudi Arabian professional multi-sports club based in Riyadh. Its football team competes in the Saudi Pro League. The name "Al-Hilal" is Arabic for "the crescent moon". Founded on 16 October 1957, the club is one of three teams to have participated in every season of the Saudi Pro League since its establishment in 1976.
In domestic competitions, Al-Hilal are the most successful Saudi club, having won a record 21 league titles, along with a record 13 Crown Prince Cup titles, seven Saudi Federation Cup titles, 10 King's Cup titles, five Saudi Super Cups, and the Saudi Founder's Cup.
In continental competitions, the club has won a record eight AFC trophies, including four AFC Champions League titles (1991, 2000, 2019, 2021), two Asian Cup Winners' Cups (1997, 2002), and two Asian Super Cups (1997, 2000).
Internationally, Al-Hilal have made multiple appearances in the FIFA Club World Cup and were runners-up in the 2022 edition, becoming the first Asian club from outside the host nation to reach the final.
In September 2009, Al-Hilal was awarded Greatest Asian Club of the 20th Century by the IFFHS. Al-Hilal has a market value of €242.5 million as of 2024, the highest in Saudi Arabia.
History
The idea of establishing the club began when the ranks of the Youth Club witnessed in 1957 a serious division among its leaders, which prompted Mr. Abdul Rahman bin Saeed to resign from the presidency of the Youth Club in that year, and many left with him, including a number of prominent players.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Al Hilal SFC” is association football club in Saudi Arabia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hilal, association and football, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “association football club in Saudi Arabia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q73965. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1976, 1991 and 2000.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Al Hilal SFC”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Al Hilal SFC primary sources, Al Hilal SFC archive and Hilal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Al Hilal SFC”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Al Hilal SFC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.