Throughout the extended crisis that has shaped most of his first season as a head coach, Ciro Ferrara has shown considerable dignity.
The Juventus boss is fighting an increasingly harder battle against the sack and having overseen the elimination of his club from the Champions League and a slide from second to sixth place in Serie A in the space of barely two months, tonight is his last chance of silverware this season.
Even success in the Coppa Italia may not save Ferrara. Standing in his way are Inter Milan.
Ferrara is up against the ropes. At least that would be his preferred figure of speech. "I'm a bit like Rocky, from the movie," Ferrara said a fortnight ago, shortly before Juve's 3-0 league defeat against AC Milan.
"I know how to take punches. I might be covered with blood but I'll keep saying to the other boxer: 'Hit me harder! That last one didn't hurt'."
But for the Rocky Balboa in Ferrara's imagination, he must now be wondering if it might not be a relief to hear the sound of the final bell. Juve have lost five of their last six matches, the latest at home to a Roma side who scored their winner in injury time.
Ferrara certainly looks rugged with his strong, chiselled jaw line and big frame, and there was a little of Rocky about him as a player, a teak-hard centre-half for Napoli, Juve and Italy.
As a coach, he dons glasses, giving a studious aura in contrast to the tough-guy player. What he has not looked is decisive. Given an arduous task of having to quickly accommodate expensive new signings such as the Brazilian pair Diego and Felipe Melo, Ferrara has often appeared the novice he is.
Diego's bright start has turned into inconsistent displays while Melo's confidence has visibly dropped. Lacking the experience of senior players such as the retired Pavel Nedved and the injured Mauro Camoranesi, the bianconeri have turned brittle under pressure of late.
Another senior man, their captain Alessandro Del Piero, has been in and out of the side and struggled with fitness problems, but, buoyed by his excellent goal against Roma last Saturday, he yesterday issued a rallying cry.
"The game against Inter is the perfect opportunity to turn things around," Del Piero said, steering clear of commenting on Ferrara's vulnerable position. Indeed, Ferrara's finest hour so far was probably that achieved against Inter, the Italian champions, whom Juve beat 2-1 in Serie A at the beginning of December.
It was a one-off. Not long after that the vultures began to circle around Ferrara. First, Juve made a barely disguised attempt to lure Guus Hiddink, the former Chelsea, PSV Eindhoven and Real Madrid head coach, from his position in charge of Russia's national team. What the Juve treasury offered Hiddink in terms of salary did not satisfy the Dutchman.
Liverpool's beleaguered Rafa Benitez has since let it be known he has appeared on a shortlist of candidates to replace Ferrara.
Benitez is never shy of hinting to his current employers that he is admired elsewhere, so that line of inquiry has been heavily amplified by the media.
More discreetly, the former Juventus and Inter head coach Giovanni Trappatoni, currently in charge of Republic of Ireland, has been sounded out about taking over for the rest of the season, with the target a top-four Serie A finish. Alberto Zaccheroni, once of Milan and Inter, is, as usual, happy to put himself in the frame.
Juve is still an attractive job, though there remains some modernising to do in a squad that includes Fabio Cannavaro, Del Piero and David Trezeguet, men old enough and at Juve for long enough to have once counted Ferrara as a teammate.
@Email:sports@thenational.ae
Inter v Juventus, 11.45pm, Aljazeera Sport +1
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Dunki
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Silent Hill f
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rating: 4.5/5
Indian construction workers stranded in Ajman with unpaid dues
Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
ETFs explained
Exhchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares, but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following their chosen indices, such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and the FTSE All World, plus a vast range of smaller exchanges and commodities, such as gold, silver, copper sugar, coffee and oil.
ETFs have zero upfront fees and annual charges as low as 0.07 per cent a year, which means you get to keep more of your returns, as actively managed funds can charge as much as 1.5 per cent a year.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five biggest providers BlackRock’s iShares range, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs, Deutsche Bank AWM X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
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Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
