One among the mass of new recruits at Al Qadsiah last summer, Cameron Puertas could have struggled to stand out.
There was Nacho, Real Madrid’s most recent captain and fresh off lifting the UEFA Champions League - his sixth overall with the Spanish giant.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, one of the finest strikers in European football during the past decade, soon followed. He would be joined in the Al Qadsiah forward ranks by Julian Quinones, a Mexico international with obvious pedigree.
In midfield, the enterprising Al Khobar club had snaffled Nahitan Nandez, a much-sought-after Uruguay international, and Ezequiel Fernandes, the highly rated youngster from Boca Juniors who had been excelling for Argentina at the 2024 Olympics in France.
Puertas, though, came with compelling credentials, too. An attacking midfielder, he had played a pivotal part in Union SG’s sealing the 2023-24 Belgian Cup.
In the Belgian top flight, his club finished top in the regular season, then through the champions’ play-offs booked their place in this season’s reformatted UEFA Champions League.
With 14 goals and 23 assists, Puertas was voted by his peers as the competition’s best player. It was therefore perhaps unsurprising that the interest was piqued of Saudi First Division League champions Al Qadsiah, seeking to make a statement upon their return to the RSL for the first time in four years.
In the time since, Puertas has proven a shrewd investment. The 26-year-old has featured in 22 of Al Qadsiah’s 23 RSL matches this campaign, starting 21. Although he has scored only once – the goals are left largely to Quinones (15) and Aubameyang (10) – Puertas has registered a club-high six assists.
And, with Al Qadsiah now third in the 2024-25 table, seven points off the summit and thus thrust into the title race, there feels much more to come from their Swiss-born Spaniard.
However, don’t just take our word for it.
“I am feeling good,” Puertas said after Sunday’s 1-0 victory at home to Al Riyadh. “I needed a little time to adapt [to the new league]. I am still not at 100 percent, but I feel better and better on the pitch.
“Until the end of the season or in the coming one, I will manage to adapt further. And we will see my real level.”
That bodes well for Al Qadsiah, both this season and next. More presently, Puertas promises to be a key contributor through the remaining 11 rounds of this campaign, one in which the promoted club’s ambitions might have recalibrated from when they acquired him last August.
Matchweek 23’s triumph made it seven wins and a draw from Al Qadsiah’s past nine RSL games, and tracking back even further, 13 victories in 16. And, with league leaders Al Ittihad to welcome to Dammam on Thursday, Puertas isn’t getting too ahead of himself.
It’s simply just keep the good times rolling.
“What we can hope is to keep going like this, keep working all together as a team,” he said. “Try not to lose some easy points, try to win the matches that we have to win. Then we will see.
“As we are doing since the beginning of the season, we don’t overthink it. We see that we are good in the table, [that] we are on a roll with matches. This is the right thing to do until the end of the season.”
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