Indulge us, if you will, while we convey a comprehensive list of Sharjah players who have scored more than one goal in the Pro League after 20 games of the season.
Edinho and Marcelo Oliveira, the Brazilians.
And we are done.
Twenty league matches, six men have scored, and the two named above have accounted for 19 of Sharjah's meagre haul of 23 goals. Emiratis have contributed three goals. In 20 matches.
Sharjah are one of the most tradition-steeped clubs in the country. They won the first league championship, back in 1974, and four more league titles up to 1998, to go with their eight President's Cups. Somewhere during that time, they took a nickname: The King.
They were an elite side into the 1990s. They provided no fewer than nine of the UAE players who went to the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
Two decades later, however, they are on the brink of relegation at the end of a season in which they made mistake after mistake in management and on-pitch performance.
They have changed coaches four times, back room upheaval that prompted Josef Hickersberger, the Al Wahda coach, to observe, without rancour: "They deserve to be relegated for that alone."
Further, they allowed their Emirati core to decay, and did not wisely use two of their expatriate slots. It has led to the failure to produce a single victory in their past 18 meetings, going back to December, against top-flight sides, a stretch with only three draws to interrupt the drumbeat of defeat.
But this is where it gets weird. Instead of the league dealing with the strong possibility of a relegated Sharjah, a debate not grounded in performance has sprung up. It revolves around one question: are Sharjah "too big to fail"?
The expression has its genesis in financial crises in the United States, where economists advanced the notion that certain institutions, no matter how poorly run, were too important to the workings of the system to be allowed to disappear.
That seems to be a notion building around Sharjah FC, as they stumbles to the finish line; they fell to Al Ahli 2-1 last night.
What would seem a fair-and-square, earned-on-the-pitch potential demotion now is being put in doubt by those who simply cannot imagine Sharjah in the second division for the first time.
A few weeks ago, Yousuf Al Serkal, the head of the interim committee running the Football Association, seemed to leave little doubt about his view of the situation.
Said Al Serkal: "I do agree that a club in the magnitude and quality of Sharjah to be relegated to the lower level is not in the interest of UAE football and the Pro League."
A second notion is this: that Sharjah are league leaders in community outreach and player development, qualities prized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and its licensing committee, and that taking Sharjah out of the top flight would hurt the league's AFC scores. The two teams due for promotion are Kalba, the little club located in a Sharjah enclave on the east coast of the country, and Dibba Al Fujairah, a top-flight debutant. Neither side are likely to impress the AFC's bean counters.
So, how to keep Sharjah around, but add the two promoted clubs?
Expand the Pro League to 14 teams.
Two teams come up; no one, and most certainly not Sharjah, goes down.
Proponents of the bigger league cite the advantage of a longer competition, 26 games instead of 22, and most of them maintain they already were mulling this even before Sharjah fell to the bottom of the table.
That concept raises two issues, one practical, one ethical.
The UAE, at present, has no more than nine "big" teams. Ajman, Emirates and Dubai, so far have had more successful seasons than Sharjah, and Ajman have outstripped half the league. But none of those three would describe themselves as big clubs.
A 14-team league would not magically produce another big club; it would take the tally of "small" clubs to five.
Also, the concept of "fairness" comes into play.
Until the past few weeks, everyone operated under the assumption that the bottom two in the Pro League would go down.
No matter their pedigree.
And so they should.
Changing the rules because events on the pitch prove unpalatable is no way to run a league.
Sharjah are two matches from earning a year of refining their methods and rebuilding their squad.
No matter their regal history or their royal nickname.
[ poberjuerge@thenational.ae ]
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