All is not well at UAE’s top club Al Ain. Less than three months into his new role as coach, Portuguese Leonardo Jardim, the former coach of AS Monaco, Sporting Lisbon and Olympiacos, seems set to make an early exit.
Jardim, who has a contract with Al Ain until the Club World Cup , is already in talks with Brazil’s Cruzeiro, it is learnt, and that has not gone well with the club.
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Cruzerio is out in the market looking for a replacement for Fernando Diniz, who was shown the door on 27 January.
The Venezuelan-born Portuguese national, Jardim, had taken over from Argentinian legend Hernan Crespo, in November last year after Al Ain lost 5-1 to Cristiano Ronaldo’s Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr in the Asian Champions League Elite and 3-0 to Al-Ahly of Egypt in the FIFA Intercontinental Cup.
Under the leadership of coach Crespo, Al Ain played 49 matches in all tournaments, losing 20, winning 22 and drawing 7, and won one championship out of five available. Crespo also led Al Ain to the biggest series of losses in the history of its participation in the Asian Championship. During 14 matches in the Elite AFC Champions League, it lost 7, won 5, and drew 2.
After the Portuguese Jardim came on board in November, Al Ain fans thought that the experienced coach would get Al Ain’s campaign back on track but he hasn’t been able to stem the rot, the way the club would have liked.
From nine league matches, Al Ain won 4 matches, drew 3, and lost 2, scoring 22 goals and conceding 14, with a total of 15 points out of 27. They are currently third in the League table with 23 points behind Sharjah and Shabab Al Ahli.
Under the management of the two great coaches, Al Ain conceded 53 goals this season in all tournaments. After all this, fans discovering that Jardim is negotiating with the Brazilian club Cruzerio is a huge setback for the club. More fuel was added last night following Al Ain’s 2-2 draw against lowly-placed Khor Fakkan FC, in the Pro League.
It is the time of social media and things like these cannot be kept under wraps. It is natural that the fans will be disappointed and upset with the news when the team is not doing that well. So the pressure is too high on the management to make a change immediately if the coach is not keen to continue:
It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the coming days.