AIK wants to come back immediately but not at any cost.
It must be sustainable.
– Sports director Hirish Saadi says after downgrading the women’s league, AIK does not deserve to continue to advance like the yo-yo team.
The nail in the coffin was painful to AIK.
Haken won 7-1 at home and captain Jenny Norden stated that AIK “may not be worth playing in the Women’s League” after the big loss.
But it may not have been Sunday’s game alone that caused AIK’s two-year hiatus in the Women’s League.
– No, this was not where it was decided. The snag is that the number is bigger, so they weren’t unexpected numbers if you say so, says the club’s sporting director, Hirish Saadi.
What do you say about the season?
Of course we are disappointed and need somewhere to be honest with ourselves and realize we weren’t good enough.
Is the problem that you don’t have a good enough team or is the team performing poorly?
It could be a combination of both worlds. When you don’t get results as a footballer, it affects you mentally as well. You enter into ideas and routines that may not benefit the team over time.
AIK wants to come back
The season must be evaluated after the last round.
– There is planning work and a strategy that we will follow to rebuild. The ambition is to reach the top of my league again. This work is going on in the background and we have one match left with the team that we have. Then we’ll see where we get, says Hirish Saadi.
Looks like you’re betting on a comeback right away?
The ambition is to get us back immediately, of course, but it has to be in a sustainable way. We can’t continue as a yo-yo team. AIK doesn’t deserve to continue as an up and down yo-yo team.
Many players cried after being demoted. The question is how many of them were left when AIK dominated the elite.
I know there are a lot of players that have certain clauses in their contract that make it more complicated than you can imagine from the outside, so I need to check those players to see which team I have for next year. After that there will be some recruitment, according to Hirish Saadi.
Messy in the club
It wasn’t just a tough season on the field. On the sidelines, there were serious purges at the beginning of May when sporting director Anne Makinen, coach Maigo Rutsalainen and assistant coach Scott Swinston were forced to resign.
Hirish Saadi, who became sporting director in this context, does not know how the repercussions affected the players.
In some aspects positively, in others negatively. It’s hard to decide in which position I’m sitting, he says and continues:
My feeling is that things have improved and that the majority of the players are satisfied with both the management and the change of coach. But of course it’s hard to be positive when results are in sight.
Key players Hannah Davison and Jenny Danielson also departed this summer. Hirish Saadi tells us how he sees the option of letting them go while battling for a new contract.
– It’s the same comments everyone got back then. My opinion is that they wanted to move on and if you don’t want to play in AIK, you don’t have to play in AIK.
What is your responsibility that you are out?
– Of course I have a responsibility. But most of the team members were hired before I was hired. I tried to cover the holes that appeared and it didn’t work.