Marino Pusic Responds to Sack Talk After Al-Ahli's 6-1 Defeat
Marino Pusic walked into the press room in Riyadh with a 6-1 defeat hanging over him and a job-shaped question waiting in the front row. He did not take it lightly.
Asked whether the thrashing by Al-Shabab at the SHG Arena on Friday had been his last game in charge of Al-Ahli, the Dutch coach snapped. “You should be ashamed of the question,” he fired back, according to Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
No soft deflection. No diplomatic sidestep. Just a stinging rebuke on a night when his team had been torn apart.
“We lost by a big and unexpected scoreline”
On the pitch, Al-Ahli were unrecognisable from the side that had strung together five straight wins in the Roshn League. Al-Shabab cut through them, punished error after error, and turned the twelfth-round fixture into a rout.
Pusic did not hide from that.
“We lost by a big and unexpected scoreline, we made many individual mistakes, the fans have the right to express what they feel, and I am a professional coach,” he said.
The damage came early. “The individual mistakes, made in the first 25 minutes, complicated everything,” he admitted, a blunt assessment of a collapse that left Al-Ahli chasing shadows long before the final whistle.
The scoreline hurt. The manner of it hurt more.
From five straight wins to a brutal reality check
This was not a coach clinging to excuses. Pusic leaned on context, but he did not rewrite the night.
Al-Ahli had arrived in Riyadh on the back of five consecutive victories, a run that had steadied the season and suggested his ideas were bedding in after a turbulent summer change in the dugout. Since taking over from German coach Matthias Jaissle at the start of the season, Pusic has overseen 17 matches in all competitions: 11 wins, five defeats, one draw.
Respectable numbers. Until a 6-1 drubbing shoves them under a harsher light.
He turned back to the supporters, knowing exactly where the anger would be aimed.
“I offer my apologies to the fans,” he said. “And we promise them hard work in the next match against Al-Sadd of Qatar.”
The words were measured. The subtext was not: judge us on the response.
Qatar trip becomes an early test of character
There is no time for Al-Ahli to linger on the humiliation. The schedule does not care about bruised pride.
Next up is a trip to Qatar, where Al-Ahli face Al-Sadd on Monday in the fourth round of the league phase of the AFC Champions League Elite. A continental stage, a demanding opponent, and a fanbase suddenly on edge after witnessing their team concede six.
For Pusic, it is more than just another fixture. It is an immediate chance to show that Riyadh was a nightmare, not a pattern. A chance to prove that the early-season record still means something, that the five wins before Al-Shabab were a foundation, not a mirage.
The sack talk has already started around him. He has heard it. He has bitten back at it. Now the only answer that counts will be delivered on Monday, under Qatari lights, with his future judged in real time.
