Young Al Jazira defender Sultan Al Suwaidi knows that ability alone will not allow him to fulfil his ambition to become a first-team regular at the Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium.
The 18-year-old right-back is in line to make his debut for the Abu Dhabi club in tonight’s Etisalat Cup tie at Bani Yas after Paulo Bonamigo confirmed he was in the provisional squad.
“Hard work, you have to put much hard work in,” comes a forceful reply from the young Emirati when I ask him what is required to make it to the top.
Al Suwaidi’s attitude is perhaps not representative of a large proportion of local players in the Pro League – many of whom find it hard to shun the delights of sheesha and junk food – but that could have something to do with the fact he has spent the last three years training with Manchester City.
Having been part of a successful Jazira youth-team set-up the youngster from Ajman was selected as one of six players to make the trip to Manchester as part of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s attempts to improve the standard of the game in the UAE.
The plan was for them to stay in the north west of England for the next three years, training alongside some of the best young talent in Europe.
What the boys found was an inhospitable climate and an intimidating standard of football. “You live all your life and you haven’t been out of the country and then all of a sudden you find this weather, it’s a shock. In the morning it’s windy, afternoon sunshine and then it’s raining hard, so it was different and a shock for the players,” Al Suwaidi reveals.
“At the beginning it was hard to cope with the level of Manchester City Football Club and it was hard because some of the players didn’t like it because we weren’t good enough to play with the academy.”
Indeed City were forced to lay on extra coaching for the Emiratis in order to get them up to scratch, and as they struggled to adapt to a new way of life as well as the suggestion they weren’t good enough, four of the boys decided to return to the UAE.
Not Sultan though. Al Suwaidi got his head down, and alongside fellow Emirati Abdulla Al Khater put the work in and by his second year in the UK was training with the academy side before graduating to sessions alongside the reserves once a week in his third.
On those cold, wet mornings in Carrington, the defender was acutely aware he wasn’t just playing for his own future but that of UAE football.
“I felt that in every game and every training I had to do my best to put my country at the front of my dreams, to represent my country as best I could,” he says.
“It isn’t represented by bad attitude or ill discipline, so every time I had to be disciplined, every time have the right attitude.”
Now back in the UAE, Al Suwaidi is keen to pass on the lessons he learned in Manchester to his fellow players in the Emirates.
The 18-year-old tells an amusing tale of being let loose with his fellow hopefuls in a Manchester supermarket only to send their fitness coach barmy as they filled up their trolley with chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks.
Al Suwaidi admits he had no idea what he needed to put in his body and is worried the message is yet to trickle back to the UAE – where the professional era is in only its fifth season.
“Players need to be mentally professional,” he adds. “They don’t have to be [reliant] on their skills, they have to be mentally professional. They need to sleep on time, be on time, be disciplined on and off the field, all the time. Whatever the professionals are doing they have to do it so they can reach a higher level.”
Al Suwaidi was worried he would lose his discipline when he returned to the Emirates, but spurred on by a desire to supplant his hero Khalid Sabeal in the Jazira first-team he is instead trying to set an example.
“If they see me in the gym all the time then they will say ‘he is in the gym all the time so I need to be in the gym all the time’,” he says. “To talk to them is the most important so they can become open minded and see everything. Because they were like this (cups his hands to blinker his eyes) and they can’t see – I was like this before.”
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