Brazilian football legend Zico has left his job as head coach of Qatari club Al Gharafa after just under six months into a two-year contract, following a less-than-inspiring run of results.
Zico said in a statement he had “entered into an agreement for an amicable cancellation” of his contract after his team suffered three defeats in a row.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get the results and football is like that,” said Zico, who played at the 1978, 1982 and 1986 World Cups and is widely regarded as one of the finest players Brazil has ever produced. “I was very well received by everyone here and the club has always behaved in a correct and proper manner.”
The Brazilian suffered mixed fortunes since taking over the coaching reins of Al Gharafa in August last year. The Flamengo legend was expected to lead his charges to domestic and continental success but has just five wins to show for after 20 games at the helm.
The former Qatar Stars League (QSL) champions, popularly known as Cheetahs, are currently placed a poor eighth in the QSL table, having won just twice in their last eight games.
They are a whopping 16 points off the top of the table—a gap they wouldn’t have conceived of at the start of the season—prompting the club management to part ways with the man who scored 41 goals in 78 appearances for Brazil.
The club’s secretary general, Jassim al-Mansouri, wished Zico all the best in his future endeavours. “Zico is a great coach and a well-known name in the world of football. We appreciate the efforts made by him with the team over the period for which he has had responsibility. He tried to help the team as much as he could and his efforts are appreciated by everyone.
“Despite the great efforts made by the Brazilian coach, the results were simply not good enough—although that does not mean he did not give his best. We wish him all the luck for the rest of his career. Sometimes in football change is mutually beneficial for both parties,” al-Mansouri said.
Zico’s coaching career has been marked by ups and downs. In his four years as coach of Japan, he won the Asian Cup in 2004 and led them to the 2006 World Cup in Germany where they managed only one point from three games.
He then joined Fenerbahce and led the Turkish club to the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time and was nicknamed ‘King Arthur’ by the club’s admiring fans.
That was followed by shorter spells with Bunyodkur in Uzbekistan, CSKA Moscow, Olympiakos and the Iraq national team—which he quit after one year complaining that the federation had failed to fulfil the terms of his contract – before taking up the job at Gharafa.
In the meantime, Gharafa have appointed their Tunisian technical director, Habib Sadiq, as interim coach until the end of the season.
