Sacked Al Wasl coach questions club's mindset

Dubai: Recently sacked Al Wasl coach Sergio Farias has attacked the club's professionalism, saying it was easier to oust him than address the club's amateurism head-on.

Farias, who joined the Zabeel outfit in July 2010, was ousted last month while Al Wasl were fourth in the league because he had allegedly "lost the dressing room" and was "over-training players before important games", according to the club's media manager Ahmad Khalifa.

In an exclusive e-mail to Gulf News via his agent Mauricio Farias Nassif, the 43-year-old Brazilian wrote: "I tried to deploy a professional philosophy in an essentially amateur club, where several players working out of the team to supplement their income made it impossible for high-level training to compete across three competitions."

He added: "The team still qualified for two semi-finals, an unprecedented feat for a team that only trains one and-a-half hours a day."

Farias continued to explain via the e-mail: "When I arrived, I tried to evaluate the professionals who made up the staff and encouraged them to seek means of updating their training methods."

He continued: "The fitness coach has worked 21 years in the Arab world administering the work of the 1970's, entirely empirical compared to the actual physical preparation necessary in today's modern game."

He added: "As for direction we made several meetings with the intention to qualify the work, suggesting changes in staff and investment in base. It's easier to continually dismiss coaches than it is to seek resolution to the club's problems and enforce changes.

"These are not examples we lack in UAE football of late, Baniyas sacked their coach while in second, Al Wasl sacked me in fourth position and Al Ahli sacked their coach while in third."

Replying to the charges, Ashraf Ahmad Mohammad, CEO of the club said: "His suggested changes should have been made as soon as he took over. He should not have waited midway through the season before complaining."