Caio Lucas, the Sharjah forward, says his side want to win the AFC Champions League Two title as a farewell gift for Cosmin Olaroiu, their coach.
Lucas is one of several players who will still likely be seeing plenty of the Romanian in the future.
As one of many UAE players in the Sharjah squad, he will be straight back under the coach’s guidance when he takes up his new role in charge of the national team as soon as the domestic season ends.
Olaroiu has overseen a fine final campaign in club football, with Sharjah reaching the final of the President’s Cup.
They are also second in the UAE Pro League, although Shabab Al Ahli – the domestic double winners – can no longer be caught at the top.
The one remaining chance they have for their endeavours to be rewarded with a trophy is in the Champions League Two final, against Lion City Sailors in Singapore on Sunday.
It also represents Olaroiu’s last shot at winning a continental title with a UAE club. He has won everything else, making him – by a distance – the most decorated coach in UAE football.
In 2015, he took Al Ahli to the final of what is now known as the AFC Champions League Elite, only for them to lose out to China’s Guangzhou Evergrande.
As such, Al Ain remain the only UAE side to have won an Asian continental title. Lucas says the players are motivated to rectify that statistic, and see Olaroiu on his way in the best fashion possible.
“As a player, I speak for my teammates when I say we try to do the best every game we play to win, and to listen to watch the coach tells us,” Lucas said.
“For sure, it would be a pleasure for us to give him this gift. We are all together to try to do our best to win the game, and to do it for the coach.
“It is an honour for us to be here to represent our country. We have worked so hard to be here and we will try to do our best.”
Since Olaroiu was confirmed as the replacement for Paulo Bento as UAE coach, Sharjah’s form has dipped. They have won just once, and lost their past five matches.
The coach reasoned that they have been dealing with the effects of injuries in their Champions League Two semi-final tie against Al Taawoun.
The fact they have shuffled their pack accordingly in the league partly explains the drop off in results, but he is confident they are ready to give everything in the final.
“The most important thing is the team who find a way to have the most self-control will be able to play to their maximum potential,” Olaroiu said.
“We hope it will be us, so we can reach our dream. To play in a final and win such a big trophy is a dream you have from when you start to play football.
“In this job, everyone dreams of this. Now our dream is 90 minutes away from us.”
Olaroiu did question whether the stage fits the occasion. The final is being played at Bishan Stadium, which is a municipal sports facility in the centre of the city state.
It is where Lion City Sailors play their regular season matches, but usually only has a small capacity for spectators.
Their home games in this competition have been played at a slightly larger ground across the city, but Sharjah protested at the match going ahead there due to it being an artificial surface.
The preferred venue for a game of such significance in Singapore would have been the 55,000-capacity National Stadium, but that will be playing host to a Lady Gaga concert instead.
The AFC had instructed the Sailors to find an alternative venue elsewhere, only for the club to convince them they could upgrade the Bishan Stadium to suitable standard.
Now the athletics track where the public are usually able to run is taken up by temporary stands, which have taken the capacity to 10,000.
All of the tickets sold out within a day, and Olaroiu is unhappy that a number of Sharjah fans who wanted to travel have missed out.
“My view is it should be in a proper stadium with a bigger capacity because football is for the fans,” Olaroiu said.
“If it was played in a bigger stadium with a bigger capacity our supporters would have more possibility to watch the game. Now, some of them are frustrated because they cannot attend.
“Of course, everything else, like the quality of the pitch, should be at the maximum standard because it is a final. It is publicity for football in the region, and the whole of Asia.
“That is my opinion, but they have made big efforts to fix those problems. Now we are here, and we have to play here.
“It doesn’t matter which conditions – full stadium, no stadium – our target is still the same. We have to follow what we have to do and forget about all these other things.”
Olaroiu said the two finalists were unfancied to reach this point, and Aleksandar Rankovic, his opposite number, echoed that sentiment.
“I don’t think anyone in Singapore was dreaming of us getting to the ACL final,” Rankovic, the Serbian coach of the Sailors, said.
“We had that dream, but it was something we would just whisper about. We didn’t have the courage to speak about it.
“We felt we could go all the way. After we went through the group phase I thought, OK, we can face anybody in this tournament.
“It means a lot. I came here with some goals that I wanted to achieve, and the ACL final is definitely the greatest one.”
The Birkin bag is made by Hermès.
It is named after actress and singer Jane Birkin
Noone from Hermès will go on record to say how much a new Birkin costs, how long one would have to wait to get one, and how many bags are actually made each year.
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Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
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.”
