One of four teams flying the flag for Asian football, United Arab Emirates side Al Ain FC get their FIFA Club World Cup™ campaign underway with a banner fixture against Italian giants Juventus FC.
Since winning their second AFC Champions League title two seasons ago, it’s been a period of struggle for the team known as the ‘Boss’.
Their Champions League defence went about as badly as it possibly could have, with the team losing six and drawing the other two of their outings in the re-formatted league phase to finish bottom of the section.
In the UAE Pro League they also struggled, finishing fifth and outside the continental places so it was little surprise that a coaching change was made. That saw Vladimir Ivic replace Leonardo Jardim in early February, with his first major task now being to plot a path to glory at the Club World Cup.
Ahead of the team’s opening match, in Washington, D.C., the 48-year-old head coach sat down with FIFA, where he touched on a new-look Al Ain side, his love for basketball and a burning desire to bring down Pep Guardiola.
Vladimir Ivic: It’s really exciting because it’s something special, where the best teams in the world are competing. It’s not something that happens every year. If we speak about Juventus, about Manchester City, they are teams that we don’t need words to describe their quality, their history.
I’ve not been here for so long so we are in the process of trying to correct things that happened in the past and correct some things that happen every day, and trying to give our best every day during [training], to be focused, and that is what we work on.
For me, the most important thing is that the players and the staff are focused on the details, focused on the daily work because this daily work will give us results and will give us something better than we had before.
We want to correct everything – about attack, about defence, about transitions, about set-pieces. So, all these things can be better and will be better.
We can’t just think about those things when we are on the pitch, we need to think and prepare ourselves when we are at home, when we are sitting and speaking with people and members of our family, at all times.
He’s the man who changed football – in a positive way, of course! A man who did everything, who achieved everything, who showed what he can do in three different countries. He’s a guy who achieved everything with his mind, with his work, with his talent and, of course, with the players that he worked with; he worked at huge clubs. But it’s not easy. His work is not easy.
Everyone who plays against him wants to beat him – it doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly game, if it’s a cup game, if it’s a Champions League game, if it’s a Premier League game or a Club World Cup game. When you play against one of the best in the world, it doesn’t matter if you are a coach, if you are a player, if you are a fan, people want to beat him!
Basketball. I like basketball because in my country, Serbia, basketball is very popular. We have a lot of good basketball players. I don’t need to say that for the last three years, the MVP in the USA is Nikola Jokic. I hope he will be again this year because he deserves it!
