Al-Ahli Saudi: Two Exits and an Unfilled Vacuum of Authority

In modern football there is a job title the television cameras almost never show: sporting director. The person who signs the contract, who builds the skeleton of a squad three years ahead, who says no to an expensive deal because it does not fit the way the team plays. No stand chants that person's name. Nobody buys a shirt with his name on the back. But when that chair sits empty, the club shakes in a way a striker's brace cannot fix. According to reports from Al-Riyadiah and Okaz, Osama Hawsawi left the sporting director's seat at Al-Ahli only a short time after taking it. Not long before that, Roi Pedro had also departed. Two changes in the same position, inside the same narrow window. A Goal.com round-up called it a fresh administrative shock hitting Al-Ahli, and placed the phrase corruption allegations in the headline itself. People remember the name of the scorer. I remember the person who placed the ball in the right spot. When the person who placed the ball has no seat left, the whole team loses its rhythm. Al-Ahli is not a small club. It is one of the most storied sides in Saudi football, based in Jeddah, a multiple domestic champion and a regular presence in continental competition. In recent years the Saudi Pro League has seen an influx of enormous capital and a wave of world-class players. Al-Ahli sits among the beneficiaries of that wave. The expectation in Jeddah is no longer to make up the numbers; it is to challenge for titles, to go deep in Asia and to hold a place in the leading group. The larger the expectation, the higher the pressure, and pressure always finds somewhere to escape. At first people blame the coach. Then they look higher. A big club with a big budget that cannot keep its head of football in place for more than a few months is an odd picture, because that chair is where the boardroom meets the dressing room, where recruitment strategy meets the real needs of the pitch. In the Goal.com round-up drawn from Saudi sources, poor results and mounting fan discontent are named as the reasons behind Pedro's removal. But no scoreline, no fixture, no specific period is given. This is what I always watch for when reading transfer news: an allegation about form without data attached is still an allegation, not evidence. Every number is a whisper, if you are patient enough to listen. Here, the numbers the article provides are two sporting director changes, one job title, one short span of time. They fall silent exactly where they should speak loudest: the league table, the points total, the run of defeats that pushed supporters past endurance. The more telling detail lies elsewhere. According to Okaz, Hawsawi left because he was not granted the full authority the job demands. Unnamed sources quoted by Goal.com add that he clashed with the management over a number of decisions concerning the first team. This is the most valuable line in the whole story, because it turns a personnel item into a finding about organisational structure. Put differently, the problem is not who left. The problem is that the sporting director role at Al-Ahli is designed in a way that makes success impossible. A man invited in to shape the squad but denied the authority to decide turns that chair into decoration. And when the chair is decoration, whoever sits in it soon looks for the door. A second exit inside a short window reinforces the point: the authority conflict was recognised almost the moment the job began, which means it was pre-existing rather than the product of one specific quarrel. From my experience watching matches and training sessions in the J.League and across Asia, I have noticed a fairly stable pattern: when a club changes sporting directors twice in quick succession, the cause rarely lies in the competence of the two individuals. It lies above them. The board keeps the decision rights while outsourcing the accountability, and when results disappoint, that accountability is passed downward without matching power. At the same time, the report mentions accusations aimed at Pedro's administrative work and some contractual files. The phrase contractual files is the one to watch. It speaks not of scouting ability but of paperwork: contract negotiation, renewals, registrations, agency agreements. That line drags the issue from performance management into process integrity. But Pedro denied all the accusations, and according to him his relationship with Al-Ahli ended by mutual consent. I have long kept the habit of separating two things: exposing the truth and judging a person. In this file, the truth the reports actually establish consists of two exits and one accusation with no investigating body attached. Judging people, in my view, is premature. Looking at the timeline, a striking sequence emerges. Pedro left amid media noise. Hawsawi was appointed in his place. Then Hawsawi also left after only a short spell. The natural question is why the successor could not last longer. The answer sits in the detail about authority, not in results on the pitch. If the sole problem were poor results, the person accountable would be the coach, not two successive sporting directors. The fact that both administrative seats emptied while the coaching seat stayed firm points to a model in which the coaching staff currently holds the stronger hand relative to the football department. That is an unusual equilibrium. At most big clubs, when results slide, the coach goes first. At Al-Ahli right now the press room is quiet while the administrative offices churn. The board is said to be demanding clear decisions on first-team matters, and the team is described as crying out for those decisions. That implies items are pending: contract renewals, recruitment targets, or squad-availability calls. As long as the sporting director's chair stays empty, those decisions stall. Stability never dazzles, but it keeps things from falling apart. And at an ambitious club, administrative stability is a quiet competitive edge. When rivals in the same league are funded to a similar level and stocked with comparable talent, the biggest remaining difference is organisational capability. A club unable to retain its head of football is prone to unforced transfer errors: paying above true value, distorting the wage structure, signing short-term deals to answer immediate pressure. This is the kind of risk that does not show on the scoreboard at once, but accumulates season by season. Another point deserves attention: the timing. The season is still running, matches keep coming, and the board must rebuild its football structure inside a short window. That pressure creates two scenarios. Either they move very fast, hire someone with an elite network and hand that person a clearly defined mandate. Or they drag, leave the seat empty and let key decisions freeze. The history of double exits in football tends to lean towards the second scenario. There is one more detail I do not want to skip, faint as it is in the round-up. The article refers to a striking comment from Firas Al-Buraikan after a night in Amman. The fixture, the competition, the scoreline and the content of the comment are all absent. But the appearance of a national-team-level forward inside an administrative story suggests the narrative is being woven into a wider web of discontent, where events on the pitch and beneath the boardroom table are told in a single breath. Here I want to set aside space for what I consider the biggest blind spot in the whole file. The headline speaks of corruption allegations. The body speaks only of media accusations aimed at one individual's administrative work, followed by that individual's categorical denial. No accuser is named. No investigating authority is mentioned. No formal proceeding is referenced. The distance between the weight of the headline and the weight of the evidence in the body is very large, and any reader skimming could mistake an accusation for an established fact. Facts are facts, and in this case the body is more reliable than the headline. From the standpoint of a writer with a sense of responsibility, I would argue the most worrying thing is not the accusations but the way they have been packaged. What the article genuinely establishes is an organisational design problem: the sporting director's role at Al-Ahli is not given the authority it needs to function. The corruption story, at this stage, remains a headline without a file behind it. This carries a significant consequence for anyone tracking the transfer market. As long as the football department stays weak, negotiating leverage tilts towards agents and selling clubs. A strong sporting director is a cost-control institution: he is the last layer that blocks deals priced by emotion. When that layer disappears, the risk of paying above true value rises. And at a club fresh from two disruptions and facing fan discontent, the pressure to deliver a marquee signing as a gesture of appeasement is enormous, regardless of whether it fits the squad's needs. I do not stand up to defend anyone; I stand up so the data can speak for itself. Here the data says Al-Ahli's biggest problem is not any individual but an unfilled vacuum of authority. A club can survive one sporting director change. Two inside a short window, with an authority dispute as the stated cause, is a sign of a systemic flaw. When the ball stops rolling, I start watching more closely, and what I see in Jeddah right now is a structure reproducing its own failure. The melody of a match does not come from the stands; it comes from the quiet figures. At Al-Ahli, those quiet figures are leaving the corridors one by one. The next thing worth tracking is not the name of the successor but the scope of authority written into that person's contract. If the next sporting director's chair still carries no defined mandate, this story will be told a third and fourth time, and the supporters will again look at each other and ask why their club cannot stand still. There is a question I often ask myself when writing about clubs in transition: what happens when a board stops holding the decisions but keeps handing out the accountability? The answer, at Al-Ahli right now, is becoming very clear. Empty administrative chairs are not merely personnel news. They are a sign that a big club has forgotten that the person who places the ball in the right spot also needs a firm seat from which to work. When the ball stops rolling, the real story carries on.