Fallen giant: What we know about Mosimane’s new club Al-Ahli Saudi

Pitso Mosimane’s new club Al-Ahli Saudi were one of the most competitive in that country and boasted three league titles before their shock first relegation to the First Division last season.

The club was founded in the same year as Orlando Pirates in 1937 and is based in the port city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s third-largest city with a population of 3.5-million.

They competed in the first national top-flight championship, the Saudi Pro League, from its inception as a founding member in the 1977-1976 season, suffering a first relegation as the second-last-placed finishers in the last campaign.

Seven teams have won the championship since the Saudi top-flight national league was founded 46 years ago. Al-Ahli are fifth on the list of the most titles.

The country’s most successful club, Al-Hilal, have 18 championships, Al-Ittihad have eight, Al-Nasr eight, Al-Shabab six, Ahli three, Al-Ettifaq two and Al-Fateh one. Ahli's titles came in 1977-1978, 1983-1984 and as recently as 2015-2016.

The club Mosimane is joining were among the most competitive in the Saudi top-flight before their past two poor seasons, finishing eighth in 2020-2021 and 15th in the 16-team Pro League in 2021-2022. From the 2011-2012 season to 2019-2020 Ahli’s finishes were fifth, third, second, first, second, second, fourth and third place.

Ahli have performed with distinction in Middle East, Gulf and Asian continental competitions. They were Asia's AFC Champions League runners-up in 1985-1986 and 2012, won the Arab Champions League in 2002-2003 and won the Gulf Club Champions Cup in 1985, 2002 and 2008.

Ahly’s 2015-2016 Pro League title came in one of their most successful periods from 2014 to 2016 when Swiss coach Christian Gross steered the team to four trophies, also adding the 2014-2015 Saudi Crown Prince Cup and 2016 King Cup.

Half a decade later the team fell from grace in spectacular fashion. Uruguayan coach Robert Siboldi, who took over in March but could not halt the slide to relegation, was fired after starting with a draw and a defeat in the second-tier Yelo League. Caretaker coach Yousef Anbar steered Ahli to two wins and a draw and they are in seventh place as Mosimane takes the reins.

Ahli’s relegation came as a shock to Persian Gulf football. They are outside the big three in Saudi football of Al-Hilal, Al-Nasr and Al-Ittihad, but their competitive record — they have also won the King Cup 13 times, among many more domestic and continental trophies — places them in the bracket of an Arsenal in England or Borussia Dortmund in Germany.

The Saudi English daily Arab News reported of the relegation: “It is a testament to the strength of the Saudi Arabian league that a team can have plenty of stars, can reach the latter stages of the Asian Champions League as they have in four of the past five seasons, and still go down.

“Al-Ahli won’t be thinking too much about that. There have been big clubs that have gone down, embarked on a much-needed reset, and have come back to the top tier revitalised and energised. There are precedents from elsewhere. A troubled Newcastle United went down in 2009 but then won the Championship in style, came back up and were in the top five in the English Premier League within two years.

“That is the challenge for Al-Ahli, to come straight back up leaner and healthier.”

Majed Al-Nafi’i resigned as president of Ahli in August. Arab News noted that losing midfielder Hussein Al-Maqhawi, a servant of the club for seven years, playing “232 games and scoring 25 goals but [who] signed for Al-Fateh back in the top tier”, was a blow to Ahli in the second tier.

Posts on the Twitter feed of MT Sports, the agency owned by Mosimane’s wife and representative Moira Tlhagale, showed the coach and his fellow technical staff members who served him at Egyptian giants Al Ahly in a “family meeting” late on Saturday night. They were presumably strategising on whether to take the offer and then working on concluding the deal.

Mosimane’s steps in his career have always been calculated and involved an element of risk.

Joining Ahly from his comfort zone as Mamelodi Sundowns coach, Mosimane would have known the move could take him into the stratosphere of African coaching, or backfire in the unpredictable, tough Egyptian top-flight. His success brought him the first of those options.

He has backed himself again at a club that will be desperate to bounce back to the top flight as soon as possible. If he succeeds, Mosimane will have the lucrative Saudi Pro League to compete in, and continental football in Asia.

There are few continents coaches from Africa can take the step to. The reputation he earned in the Middle East with Al Ahly made the Gulf, and potentially Asia to follow, a possibility and the move has the potential to open further opportunities.