Saudi adventure offers Gerrard a chance to achieve coaching success he craves

The last coach to join a Saudi club after leaving the English Premier League has proven to be a major success. Nuno Espirito Santo joined Al-Ittihad last year, having left Tottenham Hotspur, and went on to win the SPL last season.

Saudi Arabian clubs have recently also been signing high-profile players from the EPL, with the likes of Ruben Neves, Kalidou Koulibaly and Edouard Mendy arriving on these shores.

Now the English are making an appearance in the country, with Steven Gerrard taking over as Ettifaq coach on Monday, another development that could not have been foreseen just a few months ago.

The Liverpool legend has a reputation to forge, and his former club’s loyal army of worldwide fans are going to be watching intently to see what happens.

Gerrard is one of the most formidable figures in the history of the English Premier League, famously leading Liverpool to the UEFA Champions League title in 2005, spending 17 years at the club and also playing over 100 times for England.

There were high hopes then when he headed into coaching; here was a thoughtful young tactician with years of big-time experience to fall back on. 

He won the title with Glasgow Rangers, a giant of British football, and that success led to him being offered the top job at Aston Villa in November 2021.

His first few months at the home of the 1982 European champions went well, and his stature in the game helped attract talented players such as Philippe Coutinho, who joined from Barcelona. The second season did not go well, however, and after just two wins from the first 12 games of the campaign, he was dismissed.

At that time, nobody could have predicted that his next job would be in the eastern city of Dammam.

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