Al-Ahli Fans Demand Pusic's Exit After Mini-Clasico Defeat

By the time the half-time whistle cut through the noise at SHG Arena, the verdict from the travelling Al-Ahli support was brutal and unmistakable.

“Pusic out.”

The chant rolled down from the away section in Riyadh, a pointed, unified demand aimed squarely at Dutch coach Marino Pusic after a chaotic first half in the so‑called mini-Clasico against Al-Shabab.

Al-Ahli had arrived in the capital for this Roshn League Round 12 clash with expectations of a statement performance. Instead, they trudged into the dressing room 3-1 down, a man short, and with their own fans turning on the man in charge.

The game had already spiralled away from them long before the interval. The flashpoint came in the 22nd minute when goalkeeper Abdulrahman Al-Sanbi, “the Elegant,” saw red, leaving Al-Ahli to navigate more than an hour with ten men.

Al-Shabab pounced. They poured forward, carved out chance after chance, and still somehow left more goals on the table than they scored. Even so, they had three by the break and could easily have had more.

For the Al-Ahli fans packed inside SHG Arena, that was the breaking point.

As the players headed for the tunnel, the away end erupted, not in encouragement, but in open revolt against Pusic. The frustration had been simmering for weeks; in Riyadh, it boiled over. The Dutchman’s name was no longer being sung in support but shouted in anger, with calls for his dismissal echoing around the stadium.

This was not an isolated outburst. Sections of the Al-Ahli support had already voiced their displeasure with Pusic on several occasions this season. One of the flashpoints has been the signing of Ukrainian midfielder Artem Bondarenko from Shakhtar, a move that many fans have openly questioned and pinned on the coach.

Pusic took over at the start of the current campaign, succeeding German coach Matthias Jaissle and tasked with steering Al-Ahli through an ambitious new era. On paper, his record is far from disastrous: 16 matches, 11 wins, four defeats, and a single draw.

Numbers, though, don’t always soothe emotions in a club of Al-Ahli’s scale and ambition. Not when a marquee league fixture turns into a first-half collapse. Not when a red card exposes structural flaws. Not when a fanbase, restless and demanding, decides it has seen enough.

In Riyadh, the scoreboard told one story. The stands told another. And for Marino Pusic, the noise from those stands may prove far harder to silence than any opponent on the pitch.