Sparky’s Column

New Beginnings

The heat of the summer means that football is the furthest thing from a most people's minds, but we are two weeks away from the start of pre-season for most clubs in the Arabian Gulf League.  With pre-season being weeks away, it means that the transfer market has heated up even more than the weather. The popularity  of Australians in the league continues with Brett Holman making the transition from the English Premier League's Aston Villa. He has spent the majority of his time in the Dutch league before the move to England. The one season in the England was the not the most successful as he and Villa struggled. The key for Al Nasr is the qualities that Australian players bring; they are hard-working, determined and never give up. The club never really recovered from the loss of Mark Bresciano and a player of similar stature  has been hard to come across until now.

The search for a new manager for Al Ahli continues with the next incumbent having a tough act to follow. The rumour mill says the shortlist is down to two candidates, one of which is Jose Mourinhio's former assistant Aitor Karanka. The Spaniard is highly thought of and much sought after, even being considered by Everton for the vacancy filled by Martinez. He has the credentials but lacks experience in the hot seat and as we know seats rarely get hotter than the ones in UAE football.

Al Ahli's Chilean playmaker Luis Jimenez has played here in the Middle East for a couple of seasons but his links to the region stretch back a lot further than that. He started his career at Palestino in Santiago, and if it sounds more than a little like Palestine that's because the club was founded by immigrants from the country in 1920. Outside of the Middle East Chile has the highest population of Palestinians with upwards of  500,000 residing in the country. Luis Jimenez is one of the Chilean-Palestinian population and things have just gone full circle as he has now become a Palestinian citizen. He is now Al Ahli's Asian player thus freeing up a space on the club's overseas roster. It is a great story and one of the more quirky in world football, but it is just a shame that full international appearances for Chile mean he can not represent his adopted homeland. Who knows though, in the future he may get his chance to pass on some of what he has learnt to a next generation of Palestinian footballers.