As Grafite sits in a converted warehouse in dusty old Al Quoz 3 in Dubai, the Al Ahli striker is a visual contradiction. Captain of the UAE champions, he is moonlighting as brand ambassador to Adidas and appears today for a photo shoot dressed head to toe in the manufacturers’ apparel, his gleaming new Predator boots in stark contrast to the greying stubble around his temples.
Now 35, the oldest foreign player in this season’s Arabian Gulf League is still keeping it fresh. He need not try too hard. Grafite may be the granddaddy of this, a celebration of the Predator’s 20th anniversary, but he poses for pictures as the most on-message of his contemporaries inside Light House Studios B.
For a start, he is probably the only one long enough in the tooth to know who Craig Johnston is. Khalid Esmail, also taking part, presumably would not have a clue. Admittedly, through no fault of his own: Al Jazira’s powerful midfielder was football-socks-high to a grasshopper when the game’s most identifiable footwear was born. As if Grafite did not feel old enough already.
Good job he has these new treads, then, not to mention a new lease of life, since earlier this summer he signed a one-year extension at Ahli, prolonging an already creditable career for another season.
But it is difficult to escape that, even for the evergreen Grafite, the writing will soon be on the wall. For how much longer can he mix it with the young boys?
“I don’t know, my friend, I have this year,” Grafite says. “I will play, I think, two more years. I want to play only when I have a good condition to play at a high level. I don’t want to play only with my name: ‘Ah Graffa, he just plays with the club’.
“I want to play when my body feels good and I can follow the young guys. Even today, I’m 35 but I can match the guys in the physical training. If I can’t continue like this for one or two more years, it’s maximum two more years with Al Ahli. After that, I start a new thing in my life.”
Best postpone retirement for a while, because the rust has yet to set in. At Ahli last season, Grafite played more minutes than any other outfield player – 2,138 – as the Rashid Stadium club stormed to a first league title in five years.
His contribution was more readily quantifiable, though: In 25 matches, Grafite found the net 19 times. It takes his tally for Ahli to 59 goals in 66 league matches since his 2011 transfer from Wolfsburg, the side he fired to the 2008/09 German Bundesliga crown.
Only Asamoah Gyan, the Al Ain forward, has fared better during that time. Yet Grafite’s goals have been spread across all competitions, and his personal trophy cabinet now includes winner’s medals from the league, League Cup and President’s Cup. Twice voted the division’s foreigner player of the year, the last missing piece is the Golden Boot. Gyan is just not playing fair.
“I should talk with him, because the last three years, I tried to be top scorer and he has not given me the chance,” Grafite says. “I try, but Gyan is very good player. He scored 29 goals in league and now has 12 in the Asian Champions League – you cannot criticise him.
“He has a lot of quality and Al Ain have a good team, but I hope this year he gives me the chance. I managed it five years ago in Germany and I want again to be top scorer. I hope and I will try my best.”
Being the best is what Ahli aspire to again this season. They certainly were for the majority of 2013/14, sealing the championship with three rounds to spare, promptly adding the League Cup and then losing, narrowly, in the President’s Cup final in May.
This summer, they furnished the squad with some seasoned AGL campaigners. Mirel Radoi, the midfielder, joined from Al Ain; Nawaf Mubarak, from Baniyas; Habib Fardan, from Al Nasr. The finest have been commendably finessed.
“This is good, because we have a big fight,” Grafite says. “The league will be more difficult this time. So it’s important you have a fight inside the group for positions, that players don’t think, ‘I’m a regular, I will play’. It is motivation for everybody.”
Despite the loss of Brazilian forward Ciel, who suffered an ankle break in the opening 1-0 win at Sharjah, Ahli still have plenty of options, with Portuguese midfielder Hugo Viana coming into the squad in Ciel’s place.
Grafite labels it a problem for coach Cosmin Olaroiu, but a “good problem”. Given the heavy investment throughout the league, the Ahli captain envisages a tough title defence. He expects Al Ain, Al Jazira, Al Nasr and Al Wahda to challenge, if not Al Wasl, as well.
The championship will not be decided well before the final round and there will be no repeat of last season’s 16-point winning margin, he says. Astute recruitment this summer was therefore a necessity.
“If you look today to the players who have arrived to the players who stayed last year, you see that Al Ahli are stronger,” Grafite says. “But other teams are stronger, have more experience and will try to beat us.
“Cosmin said an important thing to us: we should have the mentality not to think that everything is easy. We should fight against ourselves to find our limit and to make this year better than the last.
“You can feel in training that the players are more hungry, because we start again. This year, even fighting for a place on the bench at Al Ahli will be hard. We should work well, with the heart to make a good season.”
Where Ahli are now compared to where they were when Grafite arrived is as disparate as the striker’s greying temples and his unblemished boots. Father time has not blurred memories of his initial encounter with Abdullah Al Naboodah, the Ahli chairman, when Grafite was sold a vision to drag an underachieving club, champions in 2008/09, back to the summit.
“I remember my first meeting with Al Naboodah, when the coach was Ivan Hasek,” Grafite says. “They wanted to make a project to put Al Ahli back on top of the UAE. They were there in 2009, but after, the team was a little bit down.
“And the chairman said, ‘Graffa, if you come, and keep with us, we’ll bring Luis [Jimenez], we’ll bring Jaja [Brazilian midfielder Jakson Coelho, who played for Ahli in 2011/12], so we have a good chance to start again.’
“Even the first two years were not so easy; we finished eighth, which is not good for us.
“But then we started again. Al Ahli are a big club in the UAE and our rightful place is between the top positions. Today we’re in a good way, because of good management.”
That now extends to the manager. Olaroiu’s appointment 15 months ago, in the immediate aftermath of leading Al Ain to a second successive UAE championship, surprised Grafite, but the Romanian has built on the firm foundations set in stone by predecessor Quique Sanchez Flores. Olaroiu has further cemented his reputation, too.
“When Cosmin came, our team was complete,” Grafite says. “We missed this something. Even though Quique did very good work and I liked him a lot, with Cosmin we feel stronger, the team is more competitive.
“And this was good for us. I hope he continues in this vein, even though this year, everyone will want to beat us.
“But this is football.”
jmcauley@thenational.ae
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