It’s been quite a year for Ali Mabkhout. On Sunday, the UAE international striker capped a sensational season when he was named 2014/15 Emirati Player of Season at the Arabian Gulf Awards in Abu Dhabi.
He was also named in the AGL Team of the Season alongside fellow national team players Khalid Eissa, Mohanad Salem, Khamis Ismail and Ismail Al Hammadi.
“After such a long season, I’m grateful to have won these awards,” Mabkhout said at the awards ceremony at the St Regis Hotel on Saadiyat Island. “But for me this is all in the past now. I’m already thinking about next season and hopefully it will be a successful one for Al Jazira.”
A year ago, the Abu Dhabi club signed the Montenegrin striker Mirko Vucinic from Juventus and many wondered what impact his arrival would have on the team’s main Emirati striker.
But the partnership could hardly have worked out better. Playing next to Vucinic elevated Mabkhout to a new level in what turned out to be the best season of his career so far.
He scored 16 goals in the AGL and finished top scorer at both the 2014 Gulf Cup of Nations in Saudi Arabia and the 2015 Asian Cup in Australia, scoring five goals in each as the UAE reached the semis of both competitions.
Vucinic finished top scorer in the AGL with 25 goals and won the Best Foreign Player award.
Mabkhout’s future has been the subject of recent speculation but, for now, he is preparing for the new season with his teammates under returning manager Abel Braga. Jazira ended last season empty-handed, leading to the dismissal of Eric Gerets. “We want to win everything,” Mabkhout says of the team’s targets this season.
Mabkhout and Vucinic may have helped Al Jazira to the league’s highest goal tally of 66, but the defence leaked 46 at the other end, third worst in the league.
In an effort to address the problem South Korean defender Park Jong-woo has been signed from Chinese Super League club Guangzhou, making him the club’s third foreigner alongside Vucinic and Brazilian signing Thiago Neves, who joined last month from Al Hilal.
Rumours of Mabkhout playing abroad are unlikely to go away if he maintains his form of the past 12 months.
Following the Asian Cup, newspaper reports linked him with a move to Germany after he, in direct contrast to Omar Abdulrahman, expressed a desire to play abroad at some point in his career. Since then there has also been rumours of an approach by Saudi Arabia's Al Hilal.
By the end of the 2015/16 season, Mabkhout will be 25 and entering his prime. It could be the perfect time for him to become the first high-profile Emirati to make a permanent move abroad.
For now he is coy on the subject but a few more medals and personal awards and Al Jazira will find it increasingly hard to hold onto their prized Emirati asset.
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