Marked for Abdullah Khalfan
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad15 Feb 2027
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 Ahli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Salem Al Junaibi
12 goals and a season average of 7.22 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Match13 Feb 2027
A 1‑0 win over Baniyas, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Al Ahli training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Abdullah Al Menhali is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings15 Feb 2027
Marked 7.96 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Al Ahli had the best player on the pitch.
Squad15 Feb 2027
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad30 Nov 2026
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Al Ahli will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.32, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match30 Nov 2026
Al Ahli up to position 3
25 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Market30 Nov 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Salem Al Junaibi wants continental football; whether Al Ahli can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Salem Al Junaibi was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Involvement in 2 goals, from a player who spent the ninety minutes doing the thing a manager actually wants: being where the ball was going to end up. 7.84 beside his name.
Match28 Nov 2026
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Al Ahli and Al Jazira in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Match28 Nov 2026
Three points for Al Ahli, 4‑2 the final word against Al Jazira in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Al Ahli training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hamdan Ismail is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match14 Nov 2026
4‑1, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad16 Nov 2026
The match ball belongs to Abdullah Khalfan, whose 3 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Rashid Al Shamsi: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Al Ahli have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match14 Nov 2026
Nobody wants to play Al Ahli right now
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Salem Al Junaibi was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.53, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match14 Nov 2026
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Abdullah Khalfan in the middle of it, and Baniyas unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Assists: 3. He did not need to score and would probably have been irritated to be asked. A performance built entirely out of other people's finishes.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Oct 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 64 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Match17 Oct 2026
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Salem Al Junaibi will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Al Ahli escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.31 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Jacob Awoute is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Hamdan Nader 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 Ahli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.21, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match17 Oct 2026
It finished 3‑3, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
1 error, one goal, and a night in front of the same three seconds. He will see it tonight, tomorrow and probably in February, and everybody who has played knows exactly which frame he keeps stopping on.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad12 Oct 2026
There were 12 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Walid Ismail takes the match ball home
4 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Match7 Oct 2026
Al Ahli march on in the cup
Baniyas are out and Al Ahli go through, 2‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 71 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.20, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Appolinaire Bougma, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.14
A mark of 8.14 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Match10 Oct 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Walid Ismail. 6‑4 against Al Shaab, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Al Ahli know it.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Marked 10.00 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.