Marcus Meloni

Right Back - Al Jazira
20 Feb 2027
Saturday
Process

Marked for Marcus Meloni

10 Edition

The Al Jazira Herald

5 Oct 2026
From our football correspondent Upbeat

Squad

Real improvement from Mamadou Coulibaly at Al Jazira

Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mamadou Coulibaly is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.

Squad

Kristjan Asllani in a row with a teammate

It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Jazira this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.

Boardroom

Wages eat 316% of everything Al Jazira earn

There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.

Match

A bad afternoon for Al Jazira against Baniyas

0‑2 to Baniyas, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.

The dugout

No hiding place for Ali Khaseif

“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Ali Khaseif, and the manager let it.

Player ratings

Malcom was unplayable

Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.

Squad

A row about effort at Al Jazira

Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Milson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.

Squad

Player of the month: Malcom

Four weeks in which nobody in the division did his job better. The award goes on a shelf and the player goes back into the side, which is the order Al Jazira prefer.

The dugout

The manager’s verdict

“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Mahmoud Abdulrahman left the room before anybody could ask which.

In brief