Abu Dhabi: Al Jazira have bolstered their bid to become the UAE’s pre-eminent footballing force with the appointment of a technical director, according to reports.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper claims the Abu Dhabi club have recruited the vastly experienced former England Under-20 coach Brian Eastick on a two-year deal.
However, the 64-year-old’s remit, according to the report, will not be to oversee new coach Abel Braga’s work with the first-team squad.
Instead, he will be tasked with the development of players aged from six to 20, having been recommended for the role by Manchester City.
Like City, Al Jazira are owned by Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE and Minister of Presidential Affairs.
Eastick will furnish last season’s Arabian Gulf League runners-up with more than 30 years’ coaching experience, having worked at QPR, Chelsea, Brighton & Hove Albion, Charlton Athletic, Leyton Orient, Coventry City, Crewe Alexandra and Sheffield United.
He also spent two years as Academy Director and Head Coach under Sir Bobby Robson at Newcastle United and seven years as Academy Director at Birmingham City.
Eastick, who had an undistinguished playing career with Crystal Palace and was capped at England Under-18 level, has been out of work since leaving Nottingham Forest in February.
He was assistant to boss Stuart Pearce, who was sacked, a union he had previously enjoyed when Pearce managed the England Under-21s between 2007 and 2013.
Eastick will be joined in Abu Dhabi by another backroom recruit, the Daily Mail report added.
Craig Boyd, formerly a sports scientist with the England Under-21s and senior lecturer at Sheffield University, is to lead Al Jazira’s sports science department.
It rounds off a busy and impressive few weeks of recruitment for the Pride of Abu Dhabi, who made the exciting Peru and Schalke winger Jefferson Farfan their fifth summer signing last Thursday and who are now in Austria on a pre-season training camp.
The other quartet — Brazilian attacking midfielder Thiago Neves, South Korean midfielder Park Jong-woo, Emirati defender Fares Juma and goalkeeper Saif Rashed — were unveiled by the club at a press conference earlier this month.
But these arrivals have led to the exits of the Argentinian playmaker Manuel Lanzini on a season-long loan to West Ham United and Brazilian midfielder Jucilei to the Chinese Super League club Shandong Luneng.
Meanwhile, Burkinabe winger Jonathan Pitroipa is set to move to AGL rivals Al Nasr.
Elsewhere, the former Al Ain striker Asamoah Gyan maintained his devastating scoring streak by netting his second goal in three games for his new club Shanghai SIPG on Sunday.
The Ghana captain, who plundered an extraordinary 73 goals in 63 games for the AGL champions between 2012 and his exit at the end of last season, was on target in his side’s 4-2 win over Chongqing Lifan.
The victory propelled Sven-Goran Eriksson’s men to the top of the Chinese Super League.
Gyan’s former employers Al Ain, meanwhile, lost the opening game of their two-week tour of Germany 1-0 to Uzbekistan’s Lokomotiv Tashkent on Sunday.