Al-Ahli's Sporting Director Chair Empties Twice: The Fault Is Not With the Occupant

Osama Hawsawi took the sporting director's chair at Al-Ahli, then left after only a short spell. In a season where the competitions keep rolling, an administrative change usually drifts past in the daily news feed. But the reason for the exit is where the story stops you. According to Okaz, Hawsawi was not granted the full authority the job demands. Not results, not a clash with the coaching staff, not a phone call from the owner. One line about authority, and that was that.

I have read a great many farewell statements over more than a decade in press rooms and half-empty stands. My experience following matches and transfer windows in England taught me something uncomfortable: when someone leaves a chair that fast, the cause is almost never the person. It is the pencil nobody was willing to use to draw the boundary line.

Context: a big club, two empty chairs, a season with no quiet week

Al-Ahli are the Jeddah club, one of the biggest names in Saudi football. Since 2026, according to widely reported information, the major Saudi Pro League clubs have sat under Public Investment Fund (PIF) control — the specific equity structure still requires verification against official documents.

The story starts elsewhere. Sporting director Roi Pedro was removed amid poor results and mounting discontent from supporters. Saudi media placed alongside that accusations aimed at his administrative work and some contractual files. Pedro denied everything, saying he worked with full dedication and respect, and that his relationship with Al-Ahli ended by mutual consent.

Then Hawsawi arrived. Then Hawsawi left. Two emptied chairs inside one short window. Management was forced to reorganise the sporting structure, and to do it while the fixture calendar refused them a single quiet week.

Core: power was displaced, not lost

The most telling detail here is not that two men left, but how the club is allocating responsibility. When results turn poor, pressure should flow down to the bench. At Al-Ahli it is being discharged at the administrative layer. That is a form of accountability displacement, and it says a great deal about the internal power structure.

I call it the authority unknown. A modern sporting director shapes squad planning, builds the recruitment target list, and bridges the boardroom and the head coach. That job only means something if the occupant can sign off at certain thresholds without presenting every case upward. When that threshold does not exist on paper, the role becomes a decorative seat with accountability attached. That is the failure point of every fast departure.

Hawsawi leaving after only a short spell is a stronger signal than it looks. A person needs a few months to realise the structure will not let them work. When they leave almost immediately, the problem most likely surfaced in the first meetings — meaning it is structural design, not the product of a specific personal conflict. Personal conflict needs time to accumulate. A design problem shows up on day three.

The consequence lands squarely on the next transfer window. The sporting director is the institutional counterweight to emotional buying. With that chair empty, the club's next spend risks carrying what I still call the panic premium — paying above fair value under media pressure rather than squad need. For a club that has just been through supporter discontent, the pressure to produce an expensive, soothing signing is real, and it rarely comes with the question of which position the team actually lacks.

There is a further layer rarely discussed: the sporting director is a cost-control institution. The person in that chair is the one who says no to the price intermediaries want to push up. In a transfer market as heavily funded as Saudi football, absence from that post shifts negotiating power toward agents and selling clubs. This is damage that never appears on the financial statement, but it flows through every contract.

And one paradox worth recording: there is no coach-related move anywhere in this sequence. The sporting director's chair has changed hands twice; the bench is untouched. At a results-driven club, that is a rare and rather precarious equilibrium. The bench is currently more secure than the boardroom. For now.

One loose thread remains in the source material: a striking comment from Firas Al-Buraikan after the Amman night. Which competition, which opponent, what scoreline, what was actually said — none of it is stated. But its existence shows the administrative story is being woven into a broader narrative of discontent, with a player-level voice attached. The team is reportedly crying out for clear decisions on first-team matters, and those decisions — renewals, recruitment targets, personnel calls — are hanging while the competitions keep running.

The pressure cycle at Al-Ahli runs in a familiar sequence: poor results breed discontent, discontent breeds change at the administrative layer, administrative change fails to fix results, and the loop returns — this time aimed at the bench or at senior players. Nothing in the file suggests the club has cut that loop. Reorganising the sporting structure inside a short window, while the season rolls on, is the ideal condition for a stopgap appointment to be approved faster than it should be.

Contrarian angle: from corruption in the headline to a categorical denial in the body

The headline speaks of corruption allegations. The body tells a different story: media accusations aimed at one individual's administrative work and some contractual files, followed by a categorical denial, with no investigating authority named. No complaint, no hearing, no official club statement.

The gap between headline and body is where readers are easiest to mislead. The heaviest word in the piece sits in the headline, while the evidence sits below and is considerably lighter. Read Al-Ahli through the headline and you believe in a governance scandal. Read it through the body and you see a contested departure, a denial, and an empty chair.

The contractual files accusation remains the heaviest detail, and it is heavy in a different place than people assume. It shifts the issue from performance to documentation integrity — from did he do the job well to are the papers clean. But an accusation does not automatically become a finding. Until some authority opens a file, this is reputational risk, not legal risk.

What worries me more sits elsewhere: a club that loses two sporting directors in a short period, the second walking out over insufficient authority, does not have a two-person problem. It has a role problem. If they hire a third name without rewriting the authority mandate first, the ending repeats, only the name on the ticker changes.

Football was always a drama of mistakes — I merely help make it worth watching. But a mistake repeated three times in the same seat is no longer a mistake. It is a process.

Takeaway

I mispronounced a name three times on live broadcast, and that did not make me wrong about myself. Some errors belong to the moment; others belong to the structure. Al-Ahli are in the second category. Sunderland were relegated, and I still hold my position: going down is a way of going up — but only if someone is willing to read the blueprint again from the start.

The question is not who will sit in the empty chair in Jeddah. The question is how much authority the club will hand that person, in black and white, before the season carries them onward.