Time to shut down football's revolving door

Dubai: A startling statistic best written in pencil is the fact that the UAE Pro League has gotten through 24 managers this season with six games still to play — the latest casualties being Al Ahli's David O'Leary, Al Wasl's Sergio Farias and shockingly Bani Yas' Lofti Benzarti.

Compare this to the English Premier League's four in-season fatalities, La Liga's eight and Serie A's 13 (so far) and it's clear that any professional inroads made on the pitch here in the UAE are being heavily jeopardised by amateur decisions made off it.

In dismissals which have made the sackings of Chris Hughton and Sam Allardyce look like informed decisions by both above-weight-punching Newcastle and Blackburn — O'Leary was ousted while third in the league, Farias while fourth and Benzarti while second.

Worst decisions

With the latter perhaps one of the worst decisions in regional football of the last decade (and there have been a few) Bani Yas, ten points shy of leaders Al Jazira, now have all morale wiped clean with the rest of the season still to play out under interim coach Mahdi Ali.

While O'Leary and Farias clearly weren't given the bedding-in period they deserved with just eight months on the milometer, Benzarti's two years at the helm taking second division Bani Yas into the Pro League to finish fourth and now second, has made his departure all the more bewildering.

Grossly pre-empting their inability to catch Al Jazira the also-rans have committed football suicide at a crucial juncture in the campaign with a potential 18 points still to accrue, all because of some odd anomalies in form, which occur in football.

As to whether sacking your coach while still delicately placed in contention has a positive effect on the team's consistency and spirit remains to be seen — but as poker-faces go, firing Benzarti doesn't portray a club oozing with fight-to-the-death spirit. You can almost hear premature celebrations emanating from the Mohammad Bin Zayed Stadium as a result.

While so much is being said of upping professionalism in the UAE Pro League now in its third season — the boardroom too must be taken to one side if football here is to truly improve in the sense of sustainability.

That legendary coaches Carlos Alberto Parreira, Roy Hodgson, Don Revie, Carlos Queiroz and Valeriy Lobanovskyi can come here and be regarded as failures underlines a disturbing trend rather than their ability to coach.

A recent study to identify the best coach of all time awarded it to the little known Jimmy Hogan, a man who was allowed time to put a football philosophy in place with the Magic Magyars of Budapest in the 1940s.

He was judged not on trophies accumulated but his effect on the game.

The comings and goings: