Al-Ittihad and Jens Wissing draw parallels with Jeddah rivals Al-Ahli and Matthias Jaissle

AUSTRALIA: When looking at the appointment of Jens Wissing as the new manager of Al-Ittihad, it is hard not to make the comparison to Matthias Jaissle.

The 38-year-old Jaissle has transformed Al-Ahli over the past three seasons, won back-to-back continental titles and has them as ready as any team to contend for this season’s title, and he did all of it at an age where he was still young enough to be playing, never mind coaching.

It is not just both being German; Wissing, like Jaissle, is also 38 and was born in what was then West Germany in 1988 before the fall of the Berlin Wall a year later.

His career, like Jaissle’s, was also cut short due to injury with both retiring in 2014, while Wissing also spent time in recent years within the Red Bull family at Red Bull Salzburg, as Jaissle did before moving to Al-Ahli.

And, completing the similarities, both were defenders during their playing days — Jaissle a center-back, Wissing a left-back.

During their days in the Bundesliga, their paths crossed just once, in October 2010 when Jaissle’s 1899 Hoffenheim hosted Wissing’s Borussia Monchengladbach. Hoffenheim won 3-2 that day, but to take the symmetry to the ultimate level, both players came off the bench in the exact same minute, the 85th.

And now, as fate would have it, they find themselves in Jeddah on either side of the fierce divide in Saudi Arabia’s second city. Jaissle in the green corner, Wissing in the yellow.

The million-dollar question now is whether Wissing can replicate the success Jaissle has had and return Al-Ittihad to glory after another disastrous title defense.

The appointment of someone as young as Wissing is symbolic of the generational change taking place at Al-Ittihad, which is also reflective