Al-Ahli coach’s attitude a no-winner
CAIRO: He sat laid back in the press conference, chewing his gum in a provoking way, looking at no one in the sardine-packed hall, criticizing and lecturing everybody about football as if he was the ultimate winner.
However, he was not the winner; he was Manuel Jose, whose strategies were the reason behind Al-Ahli s draw against Sfaxien in the first leg of the African Champions League final.
Actually, Jose has had a reputation as an arrogant coach since his first stint in 2001 and his tongue lashing of almost every football-linked person in Egypt and Africa during his second spell that started midway through the 2003-2004 season and has been ongoing.
His brilliant record of two Egyptian League titles and as many African Champions League trophies, winning the African Super Cup and the Egyptian Super Cup was the shield that protected and justified his behavior.
But apart from his Portugal-sized ego, what can currently be fueling his arrogance with Al-Ahli suffering a drastic setback in performance and results?
The African champions, who clinched their last Champions League title without a defeat, lost two times in this campaign in Tunisia and Ivory Coast with the latest, according to his confession, putting his side on the verge of elimination from the semis.
Locally, Al-Ahli are not playing their usual electric game. They are threatened every single game and were held twice by Arab Contractors and second-from-bottom Tersana, who have collected only four points in nine games so far.
A deeper look into team affairs reveals that Jose is not doing his homework anymore as a result of the super-coach cape that he never takes off.
The players fitness cannot help them past the first half of any game and leaves them chasing shadows after every interval because Jose insists on fielding his first-choice stars no matter how strong or weak the opponents are.
He has never benefited from his 29-man squad unless he was forced to due to injuries, many of which were sustained due to exhaustion and an overplaying policy.
Mohamed Abu Treika s knee injury is the clearest example.
Newly signed striker Rami Rabie was given too few chances to prove his worth despite Al-Ahli s desperate need for scorers with Emad Meteb’s form getting worse and Angola s Flavio notching just five league goals in 15 months.
Promising players such as Amr Fathi Samaka, Wael Riyad, Ahmed Hassan, Mohamed Abdullah and Ahmed Sedik are usually overlooked for no specific reason, although Al-Ahli fought to sign them.
Despite all of the above, Jose has never had enough courage (or maybe enough insight) to say, even once, that he was wrong.
He believes he always uses the perfect formations, selects the most suitable players, makes the right substitutions, and does all that a world-class coach can do.
Then why the bad displays and deteriorating results? Jose never runs out of excuses.
It’s either bad pitches, bad refereeing, bad Egyptian and African Football Associations, bad weather, bad luck or finally bad players playing like cartoons, according to Saint Jose.
But Jose is about to discover that he might be the comic book cartoon that was promoted to a superhero by Egyptians but they are likely to send him to the history books soon.
