Al-Ahli and Marino Pusic: Three Defeats, a Torn Ticket, and a Bet on Faith in the Eye of the Storm

The final whistle blew at King Abdullah Sports City, and what lingered was not applause. It was a roar. Tens of thousands of Al-Ahli supporters did not turn their anger toward the players who had fallen on the pitch. They turned it toward the tunnel, where a Dutchman walked with slightly slumped shoulders. Marino Pusic. Head coach. A man who had taken this hot seat just weeks before the season kicked off.

I watched that match on a screen, from a small room in Guangzhou, and wrote a single line in my notebook: "Minute 88, Sundowns lead 2-1, Pusic has not left his bench once in the final ten minutes." That is the kind of detail I obsess over. Not the scoreline, but the posture of a man just before defeat strikes. In my trade, people remember who scored, who assisted. But the man standing outside the touchline, the one responsible for everything and credited with nothing, is usually the first to be forgotten.

And now, as Al-Ahli fans roar for the board to dismiss him, the real story is not whether Pusic is good enough. It lies elsewhere. It lies in how a club of this stature allowed its coach to arrive so late, then turned around to blame him for arriving late.

The FIFA Intercontinental Cup is no small stage. It gathers continental champions, and Al-Ahli entered the match against Mamelodi Sundowns as representatives of one of the biggest-spending football nations on earth. Sundowns, the South African side with multiple CAF Champions League titles, are no easy opponent. Their football is tightly organised, battle-hardened, and tempered across many seasons at the continental summit. But for a club among Saudi Arabia's "big four," backed by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), a 1-2 defeat to an African side is a shock hard to swallow.

The Intercontinental Cup is a young competition, designed to create rare intercontinental clashes. For Al-Ahli, it was a chance to assert Saudi football's place on the world map. When that chance was lost to a South African club, the damage went beyond pride. It was a signal that the gap between football nations is narrowing, and that big clubs can no longer beat their chests about economic superiority.

The story grows heavier when set beside domestic form. Al-Ahli have lost three matches in the Saudi Pro League. Three. Early in the season, while every big club is still finding rhythm, those three defeats go beyond the issue of points. They are a signal. And in a country where football carries national pride after an unprecedented wave of investment, that signal instantly became a roar.

But this is where I want to pause a little longer. Pusic was appointed just days before the season began. Let that detail sink in. Days. No pre-season. No time to experiment with the squad. No tactical session long enough for his players to grasp his philosophy. He arrived late, and he inherited a squad built by someone else, for a different system.

Arab media describe Pusic in heavy terms. One prominent headline, translated, roughly reads: "Al-Ahli killed itself, and Sundowns punished Pusic's disaster." That framing is easy to sell. It is tidy. It has a villain. But it ignores almost all of the context.

Look at the structure of events. A coach arrives late, inherits a squad he did not choose, faces a packed schedule from the start, and is judged after four matches. Four matches. In modern football history, how many projects have been buried after just four games? Many. And most of them, in hindsight, turned out to be far less disastrous than the early roar suggested.

What stands out is that the Al-Ahli board understands this. According to the Arab media programme "Nadina," the board has stated it has no intention of sacking Pusic. It even wants to give him more backing. This decision runs against the ingrained instinct of Gulf football, where a coach is often replaced the moment the stands begin to jeer.

I have witnessed that instinct many times. It resembles the reflex of a chess player panicking after losing a piece in the opening: change everything, throw out every move, and end up destroying your own position. Big clubs in Asia and the Middle East were once famous for a "three-match coach" culture. That culture, in the end, builds nothing lasting. Patience, by contrast, is a luxury few dare to pay for.

Financially, sacking a coach mid-season is not cheap. Al-Ahli would have to pay off his contract, then recruit and integrate a replacement, who would also need time to understand the squad. For a club backed by a sovereign wealth fund, that money is not a matter of survival. But it reflects a logic: constant change creates no value. Every coaching change resets the club to the starting line, and young players, those who need stability most to develop, are the ones who suffer the most.

But I must be fair. Al-Ahli fans are not ignorant. They have seen things we do not see on a screen. They see the stalemate in the team's approach. They see a side without a clear identity. And more importantly, they see an expensive squad dragged below expectations.

Saudi fans live with football as part of their identity. The stands in Jeddah are so fervent they can lift a team or sink a man in a single evening. I have witnessed such stands in Vietnam, and I understand the feeling of tens of thousands pulling toward one goal. That feeling is beautiful. But it can also become unbearable pressure for anyone standing in the line of fire.

The problem of a coach arriving late goes beyond time. It is the clash between his philosophy and the material of a squad built for his predecessor. Pusic, as a Dutchman, may bring ideas of possession football and structured pressing. But if the squad does not fit, those ideas, however beautiful, become a burden. With no pre-season, no adaptation period, that clash can only surface on the pitch, where every mistake is displayed before tens of thousands of eyes.

One detail matters more to me than all three defeats. Pusic did not rise from his seat once in the final ten minutes against Sundowns. To an observer like me, that posture is not necessarily a sign of surrender. It might be the sign of a man trying to stay calm as everything collapses around him. Or it might be the sign of a man who has run out of ideas. From the outside, you cannot tell the two apart. And because you cannot tell, you assume the worst.

I have felt that at a smaller scale. In 2026, when I mispronounced Mbappé's name three times on air, I learned that the sports community can be both strict and generous. A small mistake, magnified by a crowd, can become a verdict. But if the person who erred is given a chance to correct it, the story can end differently. I spent thirty days rewatching every match and building a pronunciation table for more than five hundred names. That shame taught me that time and the chance to make amends are the most precious gifts a person can receive.

Al-Ahli are one of Saudi Arabia's four biggest clubs, alongside Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, and Al-Ittihad. That history sets a standard: fans accept nothing outside the top places. But that standard was shaped in an era when the league was different. Now, as Al-Hilal and Al-Nassr rise to continental and global prominence, holding a place among the leaders is harder than ever.

The Saudi Pro League has transformed entirely in a few years. The arrival of global stars and famous coaches has raised the bar of expectation. But it has also created a paradox: the gap between the leaders, Al-Hilal and Al-Nassr, and the rest keeps widening. For Al-Ahli, a top-four finish is the historic standard, but achieving it amid today's fierce competition demands a stability that a late-arriving coach cannot deliver at once.

Given that situation, the board's decision to keep Pusic takes on a different meaning. It goes beyond faith in one man. It is a bet on a philosophy: can Saudi football shift from a culture of instant reaction to one of long-term building?

I wrote about this years ago, watching Asian clubs change coaches endlessly and fail endlessly. The common denominator of the rare successful projects was not money, but time. Time for a philosophy to take root. Time for players and coach to understand each other. Time for the first defeat not to become the final word.

But time is the rarest luxury in modern football. And at clubs backed by sovereign funds, the pressure comes not from bankruptcy risk, but from public patience. Fans do not care about contract structures or severance costs. They care about what they see on the pitch every weekend.

There is one thing Arab media have almost entirely skipped, and it is the key to the whole story: why did a club of Al-Ahli's stature appoint its coach just days before the season began?

That detail is not minor. It is the sign of a gap in the process. A professional club, planning its season, usually locks in its coach early so he can take part in the transfer window, build the squad, and implement his philosophy. When that does not happen, the first and heaviest price is paid by the late-appointed coach.

In other words, Pusic may have been placed in a position where the odds of failure were higher than success from day one. And when failure came, as it had to, the roar was aimed at him, not at those who let him arrive late.

This is the kind of responsibility structure I always try to pull apart in my analysis: the person accountable to the public is often not the person who actually caused the problem. The leader at the helm is the easiest to see, and therefore the easiest to target. Pusic is seen on the touchline every match. Those who decided to let him arrive late are not.

I will keep following Al-Ahli in the coming weeks. Not to see whether Pusic is sacked, but to see whether the board has the courage to see its decision through. Because if it collapses under the roar of the stands after a few more games, it will have proven that faith is just a pretty statement until it is tested for the first time.

It is not defeat that changes a coach's fate, but the person standing before defeat, and those who placed him there. Every season has a coach waiting to be called by name, and a board waiting to be tested. And I wonder: if a coach is not given enough time to fail, who will be given enough time to succeed?