Dubai: Al Ahli chairman Abdullah Al Naboodah wants coach Cosmin Olaroiu to stay, and says he’s not one of the critics referred to in the Romanian’s recent outburst.
Olaroiu came out after the Red Knights had secured their seventh league title with two games to spare last week and hinted at a departure by wishing whoever succeeds him well.
He followed that up by saying a lot of people weren’t happy with his results. The comments have led to speculation regarding his future.
But speaking on the sidelines of Al Ahli’s league title presentation on Monday, Al Naboodah said the issue wasn’t from the club’s side. “The club’s position won’t change,” he said. “Our reply has always been that we have a two-year contract with Cosmin [until 2018] and that is what we are relying on in terms of the relation between Cosmin and the club.
“I think a lot of people didn’t understand the comments made by the coach, but he’s since said it’s not about him leaving the club, it’s about something else.
“I’ll leave the reasons for him to explain. It’s not my place to answer, but I think there are other reasons and we don’t know what they are, but in terms of the contract we are with the coach for the remainder of the contract.”
Asked who Olaroiu was referring to when he said not everyone was satisfied, Al Naboodah mysteriously replied: “I’d like him to answer that, because I know who he’s talking about, but I don’t want to say.”
And asked if he was among those critics, he added: “Definitely not.” He then said “Yes, for sure,” when asked if he thought Olaroiu would stay.
In any case, there isn’t about to be any hastily arranged crisis talk between the club and coach, according to Al Naboodah.
“What we do every year with Cosmin is meet three times a season: at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. That’s always been our formula, so there will be no sudden meeting. At the end of the season, we’ll sit together, look at next season and decide where we need to improve.”
About this season, Al Naboodah said: “It wasn’t easy, we started well, but in the middle, specifically after finishing our campaign in Asia [where they reached the Asian Champions League final losing 1-0 to Guangzhou Evergrande in November] we suffered a little dip in form. But we always had the quality to bounce back.”
The target now would be to go all the way in Asia, he added: “The big challenge has always been the Champions League and it was sort of a dream. But after reaching the final and seeing how we compete in Asia, I think it’s no longer a dream anymore, but actually a target.
“If the AGL triumph is a step towards winning the Champions League, then so be it. But the target now is definitely to win the Champions League. We’ve reached the final and I think we can get there again.
“We need to improve and be just a little bit better than we were. Not much, because we only lost 1-0 over both legs. But just a little bit more and we could make it 2-0 to us next time.”
