AFC Champions League: Awesome Al Ahli are perfect antidote to Cristiano Ronaldo and Jorge Jesus dysfunction

First-time Asian champions are a credit to Saudi Arabia football but some of the league’s most recognisable stars had an ignominious end to their campaign

Shigetoshi Hasebe, the coach of the ultimately defeated finalists Kawasaki Frontale, put it best.

Ahead of Asia’s biggest club fixture, he pointed out that, yes, his side was put together on a relative shoestring when set against the incomparable riches of Saudi Arabia's top clubs.

But, he said, football “is not played with wallets and credit cards”. It is played with heart.

All of which was presumably designed to promote the idea that his underdog side were up for the fight against Al Ahli Saudi in the AFC Champions League final.

But it also served to do the opposite. It was an acknowledgement that even the super-rich have feelings, too.

Bank balances do not define a player’s capabilities, or their drive. Sure, some of those plying their trades on eye-watering contracts in Saudi Arabia will be mercenaries. But others remain just as driven as when they were starting out, trying to make it in the game.

“Obviously, there are the titles with Leicester, Algeria and Manchester City,” Riyad Mahrez, a serial winner previously in his career in the UK, said after adding Asian glory to his collection.

“They all have a different taste and different emotions. I cannot say I prefer one or the other. This one is as good as all the other titles I have. It is a different competition, a different continent.

“Last year, when I came here, I didn’t win anything, and I was upset. This year, I wanted to make a stamp and win something, because this club deserves it.”

Mahrez is not the only player who was deemed to have taken a step away from the big time when he left Manchester City and the English Premier League to join the Saudi Arabia project two years ago.

Ivan Toney, the Ahli striker who to all intents and purposes swapped an extended career with England for a €25m annual wage to play in Jeddah, is another.

He is still making memories to last a lifetime, though. He left the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium late on Saturday night with a winners’ medal, and two match balls under his arms to give to his kids.

“It is a big achievement for everybody involved, the fans, and it is a big day for us,” Toney said.

Brentford, Toney’s previous employers, are a highly impressive club. But playing at the “bus stop in Hounslow”, as Bees fans self-deprecatingly term it, is a world away from doing so in front of 60,000 frenzied supporters at “The Jewel” in Jeddah.

Ahli’s support gets into the bones. On their way to Champions League glory, the players played with a mania that reflected that.

“Once we knew that the final eight would be in Jeddah, it was our goal to be champions in front of our fans,” Edouard Mendy, Ahli’s goalkeeper, said.

“Since I came here 18 months ago, they supported us so much. As I said when I signed here, it is to make history, to continue to win trophies, and make this club as big as it was before.”

It is not just the players who owe the supporters. Mattias Jaissle, the side’s coach, was still in a job purely because of them.

Ahli’s hierarchy were apparently looking to bring in Massimiliano Allegri – a big name to match big ambitions – earlier in the campaign, only for fan-power ensuring they persisted with Jaissle.

“I’m really proud to be the coach of this team, with how the fans were backing me up also in difficult times,” Jaissle said.

He has done a remarkable job since arriving in 2023, as a little-known coach with the experience of two clubs in Austria, at a club just emerging from the second tier of Saudi football.

For such an inexperienced coach, the task of dealing with such high-achieving, and lavishly remunerated players, might be daunting. Jaissle seems to have cracked it, though, by realising there are individuals that make up the whole.

All have their eccentricities. Mahrez, for example, might be the third highest paid player in football – after Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema – but he is also heroically shambolic.

Tasked with the pre-match rituals on the eve of the final, Mahrez and his manager, Jaissle, could hardly have cut more contrasting figures.

The 37-year-old coach was a picture of corporate efficiency, with neatly slicked back hair, and a sharp suit and shirt, which accentuated his trim physique.

And his star player? Not so much. When he was asked to pose for photos with the trophy, Mahrez was belatedly minded to take his hands out of the pockets of his tracksuit trousers.

And he also only just remembered to take off his black baseball cap, and smooth down his scruffy bed head.

Jaissle seemed to find it all amusing. He was struggling to suppress a giggle at Mahrez’s mannerisms.

Which was perhaps a clue to his method. Having a manager who tried to make players like Mahrez or Toney, or crowd favourites Roger Ibanez and Ali Majrashi, conform to one type just would not work. Jaissle appears to have the emotional IQ to know how to manage different types of people.

Crucially, he is also a manager who is visibly glad to be in Saudi Arabia, grateful for the chance to test himself in such a challenging climate.

The same cannot be said for everyone. It contrasts wildly with the clubs from Riyadh, where Stefano Pioli appeared to think he is doing the league a favour just by being there. And where Jorge Jesus’s wildly fluctuating spell in charge of Hilal reached an ignominious end.

Pioli, in particular, could not have played into the stereotype about being there solely for the money any more than he managed in the Champions League finals.

When his Al Nassr side flounced out of the tournament with a supine display in a 3-2 loss to Kawasaki in the semi-final, he barely showed a flicker of emotion. He was insouciant when he really, really needed to show he cared.

Maybe he is above it all. Maybe when you earn so much, you are entitled to think this is all beneath you. But people do actually care about this team. Some Al Nassr fans were crying in the stands after their loss to Kawasaki.

In a post-match press conference in which the anger of the national press did not seem to rouse him, Pioli said: “I feel the sorrow of the fans.” Really? He had a funny way of showing it.

Obviously, there is a balance somewhere between calmness and losing it, as Jesus did in the other semi-final.

While Nassr’s players looked like they didn’t care at all, Hilal’s were overemotional in their 3-1 defeat to Ahli in their semi-final.

It was a reflection of a coaching tenure which reached extraordinary highs last season, when Jesus's side won 34 matches in a row in all competitions, but plumbed the depths by the end.

Simply, they lost control, as evidenced by Kalidou Koulibaly’s sending off for two brutal challenges, and a red card for a member of the back room staff for kicking a water bottle on to the field in a rage.

Hilal’s demise was self-inflicted and unprofessional, but at least they offered the pretence of caring.

Nassr didn’t. Picked apart by a tactical masterclass by Hasebe, they were woeful.

Ronaldo, Nassr's top goalscorer, was left to do so with some performative histrionics after the final whistle. If he had scored when the goal was at his mercy a few moments earlier, or left any one of the three second-half free kicks he had to someone who might have had a chance of scoring, maybe all the preening wouldn’t have been necessary.

Their demise meant East would meet West in the final. It went to show that not all cash-rich superpowers are built the same. While overspending can infect a team, Ahli and their glorious support show there is an antidote when handled right.