Is there room for 14 clubs in AGL when relegation is typically a revolving door

Is there room for 14 clubs in a league where relegation is typically a revolving door for clubs such as Kalba, asks Ahmed Rizvi.

Kalba, in yellow, found themselves overmatched by Al Wahda and the rest of the regular faces in the Arabian Gulf League’s top flight on their way to relegation this season. Mohideen / Al Ittihad

They come, they get thrashed and then they are back in Division One.

That has been the story of Kalba in the Arabian Gulf League on their past two visits to the top division.

They have looked completely out of their depth, have failed to be competitive and have never been able to change perceptions.

Kalba have been the proverbial poor cousins no one likes to invite to their birthday party, but they have played in the AGL twice over the past three seasons, thanks to the decision to expand the league to 14 teams in the summer of 2012.

At the end of the 2012/13 season, Kalba were, unsurprisingly, at the bottom of the points table with 11 points and three victories from their 26 matches – a difference of 51 points between them and champions Al Ain.

They scored only 24 goals through the campaign but conceded 75, which is the worst defensive performance by a UAE club in the top division since Ras Al Khaimah conceded 126 in the 1998/99 season, which involved 33 matches.

The club apparently did not learn much from their disappointments of 2012/13.

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Returning as Division One champions for the 2014/15 AGL season, they finished at the bottom again with 10 points, one fewer than in 2012/13. Again, there was a gap of 50 points between them and champions Al Ain.

Last season, Al Shaab finished at the bottom of the AGL table with 13 points and the difference between them and champs Al Ahli was 51 points.

In a 14-team league, where the maximum points on offer is 78, that is a huge gap and a bad advertisement for the quality of the league.

This was precisely the fear expressed by officials from Al Ain, Al Wahda and Al Dhafra in the summer of 2012 when the move to expand the league, spearheaded by the relegated Sharjah, was in full swing.

“If we increase the league to 14 teams, we are going to see greater imbalance and a lot weaker competition, and this is not going to serve UAE football,” an Al Ain official said at the time.

That is exactly what is happening.

The Pro League Committee, which runs the league, seems now to agree.

Its executive office made a formal request to the Football Association last week asking for a reduction in the number of teams to 12.

The request comes after the technical committee of the PLC “conducted a thorough study on the matter and concluded that the decision to expand the league to 14 teams needs to be reviewed”.

Top officials at the FA are not in favour of reverting to 12 teams and said it would weaken the access of UAE clubs to the Asian Champions League.

Though the Asian Football Confederation has suggested clubs in the top division of a member association should be playing 33 matches a season, Australia have only 10 teams in their top division, the A-League, and one of those teams is based in Wellington, New Zealand.

Yet they managed to score more points (57.940) in the 2015 AFC evaluations than did the UAE (57.792) and got the same number of direct entries (two) into the current Champions League competition as did the AGL.

So the AFC criteria cannot be used as an excuse for littering the calendar with dreary, meaningless matches, especially in the coming seasons as Mahdi Ali charts the UAE’s path through 2018 World Cup qualifying.

According to some media reports, the UAE national team coach, who prefers thorough preparatory camps, has requested that senior team members be made available for 93 days between August 2015 and March 2016.

“We have an almost four-month-long off-season and all these Fifa days and national team requirements to accommodate,” said a PLC official, who has the “thankless job” of putting the season’s calendar together.

“Then we have three domestic tournaments. We try to do our best with the days we have, but nobody is happy.”

Reducing the number of teams could certainly make the task of scheduling easier.

It could even raise the quality of the league and UAE football, according to Mohammed Al Rumaithi, the former UAE football chief, who was elected to the AFC’s executive office this month.

“I am in favour of reducing the teams in the league to 10,” said Al Rumaithi, who wants to see a three-division structure in the UAE, unlike the present two-division set-up, with 14 teams in the AGL and 11 in Division One.

“We will then have five matches in every round and there will be a greater focus on technical and administrative quality.

“We will need five arbitration crews instead of seven every round, which means we have quality and choice, and we can reduce the frequency of officials at a club’s matches.”

Al Rumaithi cited the example of Scotland, which has more than 500 football clubs but only 12 in the top tier and 10 each in three lower tiers.

“The professional league puts a greater demand on clubs and not every club in the country has this potential,” Al Rumaithi said.

The country also has a much smaller base of football players, about 7,000, which pales in comparison to hundreds of thousands playing in Japan or South Korea. So it would be wiser to choose quality over quantity.

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