São Paulo – Football coach Luís Antônio Zaluar of Rio de Janeiro has been coaching the Saudi Arabian football team Al Akhdoud since 2019. Last Saturday (3), the team (pictured above) won a national championship game, moving from the Second to the First Division after thirty years.
The team is based in Najran, in southwest Saudi Arabia, near the Yemen border. Zaluar relies on a staff of fellow Rio natives: fitness trainer Carlo Flavio Socha, goalkeeper coach Luciano Almeida and physical therapist André Amorim.
There are two Brazilian players on the team – striker Taylon, of Minas Gerais, and midfielder Kaká Mendes, of Ceará. Both are 27. All other players are Saudi. This is the Brazilian players’ first time working in Saudi Arabia, but Zaluar has coached nine different teams across the Gulf since 1987, with stints in five other teams in Saudi Arabia, two teamsw in the UAE and one team in Qatar.
Thirteen Brazilians have been living in Najran since July 2019, between staff’s and players’ families. Last year there was a hiatus: “When the pandemic began, the championship got suspended and we had to go back to Brazil,” the coach told ANBA over the phone from Saudi Arabia. In March 2020, Brazil’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Marcelo Della Nina, arranged a repatriation flight for 181 Brazilian nationals. According to Zaluar, 160 of the passengers on the flight were football players and their families.
In May 2020, Al Akhdoud players and staff got called back into Saudi Arabia, where they have been ever since. The championship final will be played on Friday (8), and Al Akhdoud needs a tie against Bisha FC to win the title. The match will air on this link at 2:45 pm, Brasília time.
But what has already been achieved is more important, said Zaluar. “We have been on this two-season project since 2019, and last Saturday we managed to get the team on the First Division, which is akin to going from the B to the A Series in the Brazilian championship. Tomorrow’s match isn’t as important. Getting into the First Division was much more important than winning the championship,” he said, pointing out that Al Akhdoud had been in the second tier for over thirty years.
Ambassador Della Nina attended the game on Saturday and witnessed the crucial win. “According to Zaluar, this was the first time a Brazilian ambassador ever went to Najran. “We grew close during the repatriation flight episode. The ambassador found out about our work and our efforts, and we invited him to watch the game,” the coach said.
Zaluar said the Saudis are ecstatic. “They’re still celebrating, and [management] is very pleased with our work. That’s what they got us on board for: to get them into the First Division.”
The coach and all Brazilians in Najran got their first shot of the Oxford vaccine on March 15. They are waiting to get the second shot before going back to Brazil, in case their contracts do not get renewed for the next season.
Zaluar claims that “living conditions have improved a lot” in Saudi since he first came to the country in 1987. A self-taught Arabic speaker, he has been able to communicate well since the year 2000 but cannot read or write. While learning the language, he created a handwritten dictionary of over 5,000 words. “They understand me fine, I have no problem getting through to them. I did take a course to learn English, but when it came to Arabic I taught myself the hard way,” he quipped.
Zaluar said dozens of Brazilian coaches have worked in Arab countries, but they lost space to Europeans and Arabs (from Egypt and Tunisia) in the past ten or fifteen years. “We hadn’t been in such high demand, and after [Brazil lost a FIFA World Cup match at home] 7 to 1, virtually no Brazilian coaches were coming over anymore. Now, little by little, we’re getting our space back. It’s been a struggle. There are four Brazilian coaches in Saudi Arabia right now,” he said.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum