With the Saudi Pro League offseason now upon us, you might think that Al-Kholood owner Ben Harburg would take the opportunity to put his feet up after a relentless past 12 months that saw him take over and overhaul the Saudi minnow.
You might even think he would bask in the glow of making the King’s Cup final, a feat that put his small club from the small city of Ar Rass on the global map.
But to think that would be to underestimate the internal drive that motivates the US businessman every single day. You don’t become as successful as Harburg by slowing down and looking back.
Speaking to Arab News at the end of a long and evidently tiring season, Harburg explained that far from slowing down, the offseason will see him step it up a gear in his pursuit to revolutionize the club and, in return, the game in Saudi Arabia.
“No, I feel energized,” he said.
“I wish the season wasn’t ending, actually. I mean, it was emotionally a bit of a roller coaster on the pitch, but almost everything else off the pitch has been going phenomenally well, and the spotlight is only increasing, and the stage for us is increasing, and the interest in the club is increasing
“So, we’re putting our foot on the gas now. We’re going to keep producing content all summer to stay relevant, even while things get quieter. We’ll be doing things with the World Cup, we’ll be doing things with the Saudi national team, we’ll be producing some of our own content and shows and things like that, and then putting a huge amount of time and energy into the offseason again on the infrastructure side and human capital side, and on the coaching staff, and then on the pitch.
“So, if anything, the work is going to increase, but for me, as I’ve said from the (outset), this isn’t work. I love this. I mean, this isn’t a chore, this isn’t a job. I don’t get paid to do it. I do it because I love it.”
It’s been a whirlwind 12 months for the US investor, who created history last offseason by becoming the first foreigner to own an SPL club. His style of transparency has seen him become a hit all around the Kingdom, and not just with fans of Al-Kholood.
“A lot of what we said at the beginning of the season was exactly what we’ve executed on and did,” he explained.
“So, I think our strategy around how we wanted to build the club, how we wanted to survive the season, how we wanted to build the fan base, bring the community in, change the way people think about how football can be done in the Kingdom by being more economical and still performing at a high level; I think all that remained true throughout the season.
“In terms of how I’d assess the season, I’d say I give it a passing grade. So, the objective was don’t get relegated; mission accomplished, albeit with relatively low point total.
“The King’s Cup run obviously masks, let’s say, some of the shortcomings in the club and makes it look better than it was, in my opinion. But I’m usually a glass-half-empty kind of guy, so I’m looking at all the flaws, and I’m looking at all the things that need to be fixed.
“I wouldn’t say I’m beaming with pride at what we’ve accomplished this season because I think we can do even better.”
If that seems overly critical, that is just Harburg’s style and probably explains why he has been so successful throughout his business career; he is driven by a pursuit of excellence and not content with just being good enough.
Such an attitude should be a prerequisite for being a club owner. No one should ever be satisfied and rest on their laurels; that is how complacency kicks in. In sport, complacency is death. There should always be the pursuit of more, and that is certainly how Harburg views the world.
So, after rapid change last season, expect even more change this offseason.
“We’re literally working on every layer of the stack,” he explained.
“So, the team is going to turn over significantly. We’ll probably be changing four or five foreign players. We’ve got a lot of Saudi players also, whose contracts are coming up, and so there’ll be a lot of turnover in the Saudi ranks.
“The coaching ranks need to be further built out as well. We need more specialized coaches. Fitness needs to improve, recovery needs to improve, nutrition needs to improve, set pieces need to improve. So, we’re going to do a lot of building out a more robust coaching team.
“Then we’re developing a new infrastructure (plan), so a new training center will be announced soon. And then, beyond that, back office, a lot of work to do too.
“So, we’ve been kind of running the club on a skeleton crew this season, just to test out where the pain points were, what we really needed, and where we should overinvest. So, we’ll be building out a pretty significant human capital program, as well.”
Harburg admits that convincing people to join his club last season was difficult, with nothing but a dream to sell. But with runs now on the board and a proof of concept, that task should hopefully be easier this time around.
“I said that from the (outset), we want to be viewed as the club that has the best infrastructure, the best coaching, the best player preparation team; a completely different vibe than other clubs. A vibe that makes people feel like they’re part of a club run by global best practices that has just a very different feel in the building that gets a lot more eyeballs on our players.
“And it already works. I mean, my phone is blowing up with Saudi players and global players who want to play for us, want to come to us, and I think when we make the announcement around our infrastructure development, we should have a facility that will be top three in the league, and so that will only help that recruitment drive.
“But I struggled at the beginning of the season to convince people to come on board and join an almost startup project and to convince them that we were going to be sustainable, that this was going to work.
“And I think what we’ve done in social media, what we’ve done with the community, the out-performance in the King’s Cup, and the spotlight that generated, I think, has created a huge weapon for us as it pertains to player recruitment, which is our bread and butter.
“We live and die through our ability to recruit players because we can’t win on spending. I can’t out-spend. There’s going to be next year in our league at least seven or eight clubs with whom I can never match their spending power, so the only way we’re going to be able to do it is through this kind of soft touch vibe shift (where) people really see (that) aesthetically we’re different, culturally we’re different, fan base we’re different, and it’s working.”
