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February 14, 2024

Pitso Mosimane is ready for his next journey with the struggling Saudi Pro League team Abha – Saudi Pro League

Since moving to the Kingdom, the South African coach has been in charge of saving the team, which is currently in second place in the table.

Over the past few days, Pitso Mosimane has had every right to feel a little reflected glory from his hotel room in Abha, southwest Saudi Arabia. After practice and preparation for his new position in the Saudi Pro League are over for the day, he spends his evenings watching the exciting international competitions that have rung in the new year.

Mosimane found a special connection between the Africa Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup. He witnessed players in Ivory Coast whose growth he had a significant influence on flourishing above and beyond expectations. He saw firsthand how the Gulf football scene was evolving in Qatar, with underdogs challenging established power structures and giants.

In what he refers to as his “new adventure,” Mosimane wants to bring back a little bit of that youthful energy to Abha. This team is mired in the bottom half of the Saudi Pro League, which resumes play on Thursday following its winter break.

The South Africans were happy to see specific individual performances in addition to the exciting spectacle that the Asian Cup and the Afcon offered. The 59-year-old, who has won three CAF Champions League titles—two with Egypt’s Al Ahly—has been a trailblazer in the field of African coaching, having conquered lands that were previously unattainable for men in his line of work from south of the Sahara.

He witnessed Ivory Coast’s Emerse Fae, the caretaker de luxe, an African coach, celebrate victory at the Afcon last Sunday night. This continued a tradition of local success in a competition where, for decades, the general consensus had been to entrust foreign managers, primarily from Europe, with the direction of national teams. Like Afcon-winning coach Aliou Cisse, Fae is a former player from the Ivory Coast of Senegal who was an ex-Senegal player two years ago.

In agreement with Djamel Belmadi, the coach of Algeria’s 2019 Cup of Nations winners. Between those victories, Walid Regragui managed Morocco’s incredible journey to a World Cup semi final in Qatar. Hussein Ammouta, a fellow Moroccan, managed Jordan, the unexpected winners, and this past weekend, Ammouta earned a silver medal at the Asian Cup.

“We have all had to fight; Aliou Cisse has, Walid Regragui has, being up against European coaches with big CVs,” reflected Mosimane, speaking to The National ahead of his coaching debut in Saudi Arabia’s monied top division, a new frontier in his storied career.

“The world is what it is. I don’t think there’s yet many technical directors who look far outside the traditional window. But thanks to the Middle East, I have another opportunity.”

Mosimane’s previous success as a rescuer was one of the many recommendations to Abha’s directors, so this is not his first job in Saudi Arabia. He served as Al Ahli’s coach during the previous season. Al Ahli was a heavyweight demoted from the top division in 2021–2022. 

Mosimane was brought in to manage an immediate recovery. Al Ahli secured their return to the Pro League with just four games remaining.

After achieving his goal, Mosimane left the area shortly before Al Ahli, one of four Saudi teams chosen to receive historic financial support from the nation’s Public Investment Fund, became a major player in the ambitious plan to elevate elite professional sport throughout the Kingdom.

“I didn’t know the transformation was coming,” Mosimane recalls, “although there were rumors. And it’s the biggest transformation: nearly €1 billion spent on transfers across the league. I see players I coached at Al Ahli now in a team with Riyad Mahrez, Roberto Firmino and Edu Mendy. I saw them taking selfies with these guys.”

“I think ‘What an opportunity for them to be learning from and sitting in the dressing-room alongside players they only knew from watching them on television’. It’s a good transformation, a good thing for the club.”

It is another matter entirely how beneficial it might be for Saudi clubs with less privileged access to star-studded capital. Even though Abha, a third-tier team as recently as 2019, has a history of success, they can’t help but notice the enormous disparity in resources when they look up at teams like Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr, Al Hilal, who win the league despite Neymar’s injury, Al Ahli, and Karim Benzema’s Al Ittihad.

“With the differences between those four clubs and the rest, it can seem like we’re their sparring partners,” smiles Mosimane. “But for me it’s about the challenge and, I guess, I’m trying to finish a story. If I personalize it, I won promotion to this league with Al Ahli, so I should be in the Pro League. Of course, the conditions are different. It’s now the biggest league in the Gulf, maybe in Asia.”

A new addition to a league promoting its global reach and breadth of expertise is Mosimane, who is charming, forthright, and adept at creating fluid and visually appealing teams.

He carries his armload of African club championships to a table occupied by coaches who have won the Copa Libertadores, the Champions League of South America, and various Asian and European medals, including Jorge Jesus of Al Hilal and Marcelo Gallardo of Al Ittihad.

Mosimane would prefer to assess the Pro League standing internationally after a few games with Abha, whose touchline he will patrol against Al Taawoun on Thursday. “It’s a question I am asking myself. Ronaldo says it’s better than Ligue 1, and maybe he’s justified. He’s been here a year, after all.”

Similarly, Saudi Arabian football’s self-esteem has suffered recently. The national team was eliminated in the first knockout round of the Asian Cup. In December, Mosimane’s former club, Al Ahly in Egypt, comfortably defeated Al Ittihad, the reigning domestic champions, in the Club World Cup.

Mosimane had led Al Ahly to the medal podium twice in that prestigious Fifa tournament, marking the pinnacles of a 20-year managerial career filled with trophies.

In 2004, he won his first coaching trophy in a domestic cup with Supersport United, a middleweight South African club. He helped players like Themba Zwane and Percy Tau advance in their careers and led Mamelodi Sundowns—where he had been a skilled center-forward in his playing days—to their first CAF Champions League title. He was also pleased to watch South Africa win an unexpected bronze medal at the Afcon.

“I’m an inquisitive guy,” he says. “I’ve always asked myself questions. When I was coaching in South Africa, clubs from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria dominated at the Champions League level.

“I thought: ‘What is it they do that we can’t do in sub-Saharan football?’ The players’ wages were a difference, I knew that. But I wanted to know ‘Can I be in that space, ruffle some feathers?’ With Sundowns, I had a team that could compete and maybe change the mentality.”

He broke a mold after being lured to Cairo by Al Ahly. “It’s the highest pressure job I have had,” he reflects. “This is a club with 60 to 70 million followers. That’s bigger than my country’s entire population. And they had won their league, so the question was: What can you add here? They wanted to be back on the international stage. I had one mandate, to win the Champions League, which we did successfully, two years in a row.”

Unfulfilling experiences have included playing South Africa’s national team more than ten years ago and a short stint at Al Wahda in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of this season—seven games, more wins than losses, but an abrupt departure in November. “We didn’t agree on the route to winning the league. Things didn’t mesh,” he says.

“When principles are compromised in my space, in my way of doing things, it starts to be an environment that’s not good.” Of the parting of ways, he says: “It was all done nicely, no fights!”

After the experienced Cameroonian striker, Karl Toko Ekambi left Abha during the winter transfer window to make room for defensive reinforcements, he joined the team, becoming their third different manager this season.

Mosimane understands why that makes sense: Abha is the team that has given up the most goals in the Pro League. They were defeated 6-0 at home against Al Ahli in November and 7-0 at Al Hilal right before the winter break.

“It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” acknowledges Mosimane, whose initial deal runs for four months until the season’s end. “Abha is one of the league’s ‘small’ teams. But there’s ambition, there’s a bit of experience. We need to try to do things a little differently.”

“If we can save them from relegation, there’s an opportunity to then make them much, much better. It’s an adventure, and I like adventures.”

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