The long-awaited meeting between the chairman of the board of directors and the sports general director of the JSK ultimately did not take place. The two men would not even have given themselves the chance to explain themselves over the phone.
It must be said that these two men never looked in the same direction. But although their visions, priorities and objectives are different, Medane and Ould-Ali have until recently kept up appearances, managed and supported each other, until sporting failures lifted the veil on a situation that over time had become unbearable for both. However, many predicted the failure of this collaboration. Not because the two men don’t like each other (they were very good friends before working together), but because Medane Hakim, by his position, his personality, his experience as a player and manager and his experience at the FAF, the JSK and the JSMB, needs to be free of his decisions, at least in the field which is his, that is to say, sporting.
And Ould-Ali, for exactly the same reasons, with the status of boss of the JSK in addition, could not stand it when one of his colleagues bypassed him or did not consult him on files and subjects that he thought he had the right to slice. If it is routine for Ould-Ali, accustomed thanks to his activist past and the positions he subsequently held to operate in this kind of environment, this squabble, camouflaged by the good results of the team, ended up exhausting Medane, but also his collaborators, Doudane and Saâdi, in this case.
The origin of the quarrel
“The JSK problem is not at my level,” said Hakim Medane after the ESS-JSK match. “A lot has happened since the match against Al Ahly in Cairo,” he added as if to say that all is not well at JSK. These two sentences, even if they are not explicit, demonstrate a deep unease within the club’s high command. Hakim Medane and El-Hadi Ould-Ali do not get along. They were never on the same wavelength. At the origin of this quarrel: the communication policy advocated by the president of the CA, with the players, with the different staff, with the public and even with the official authorities, FAF, LFP, CD-LFP, wilaya and DJS… which Hakim Medane would judge, according to consistent sources, “approximate, muddled, populist and counterproductive”.
Knowing that the sports management has no power over the club’s communication channels, exclusively controlled by Ould-Ali. Another complaint against Ould-Ali is the lack of staff and resources in sensitive departments such as administration, the legal service, the general secretariat and communications.
Mobilis must intervene and quickly!
“Medane does not like when Ould-Ali communicates on the sporting side, talks about objectives, the transfer window, players, the coach without being consulted beforehand. According to him, these questions must be coordinated, studied and thought through,” a club source will tell us, who adds: “Even the management of the official platform and the invitations controlled by Ould-Ali does not pass.” A close friend of the president of the CA will tell us that the latter finds that Hakim Medane exceeds his prerogatives and acts in the club as if he were the “boss”.
Things have reached the point where, even the resignation of a key element of the new JSK project, Medane in this case, does not make the first manager of the club react. Neither press release, nor meeting, nor summons…all we know is that Medane tried to call Ould-Ali the day after the Sétif match, without success and that the latter tried to contact him the next day, also without success. The same evening, an emissary from Ould-Ali informed Medane that the president would like to see him at the office and that the latter replied that he was very ill, bedridden, and that he would travel to the stadium as soon as his health permitted. Yesterday, for the evening session, the general sports director showed up for training but not Ould-Ali. We tried to contact the two officials in recent days, to no avail. This takes us to Mobilis, owner of the club: what is he waiting for to intervene to put an end to this situation? And to quote Hakim Medane’s statement in Sétif: “This cannot continue like this.”
K. M.
