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Mohammad Amin Al-Daouk is an attorney and an international arbitrator. He has presided over Nejmeh since 2005. When Nejmeh club moved into the patronage of the Hariri establishment in 2003, Daouk became the second person to serve as a president under the new patronage having been preceded by Fanj (2003 – 2005).

My interview with Mr. Daouk was the final one I conducted during fieldwork, and although I had his approval to conduct this research and had previously seen him at games and the club’s stadium, the interview was my only substantive conversation with him. The interview took place in Daouk’s work space, on a Saturday morning, in his spacious office in Beirut’s Sanayeh district.

On taking on the presidency of the club, Daouk recalls:

‘I was called one day by Prime Minister Hariri, he wanted to see me. I thought maybe it has to do with politics since [parliamentary] elections were coming up […] or maybe business, as I was handling one of his court cases as a lawyer, but I was surprised when he said he wanted me as Nejmeh club’s President. I was already a General Assembly member, which goes back to my personal and professional friendship with Hajj Omar Ghandour, who had enrolled me in the General Assembly without me really having much to do with football. I am just like any other citizen in my relationship with football; I like it just as I like basketball, which I have played at school, but I have never played football. I was a bit surprised by that offer to tell you the truth; I had not taken interest in football previously. This is when he told me that this was not a mere football club, that Nejmeh was full of history, and representative of the nobility, lineage and rootedness of Lebanon and Beirut in particular, and about his desire to find a person and a name worthy of managing it.’⁹⁵

After some resistance, Daouk accepted the responsibility Rafic Hariri entrusted him with saying ‘It would be difficult to deny him a request’. Daouk justified his decision not only by the Prime Minister’s political position, but also by what he describes as their ‘personal friendship’. As I was told by an insider to both the club and the Hariri establishment, the

95 Interview took place on 25/9/2009 in the office of Mr. Daouk. It was recorded and conducted in Arabic; translation from Arabic is mine.

club’s presidency was given to Daouk ‘as a commitment from Prime Minister Hariri to find Daouk an alternative role’ after he had had to side-line him - because of local and regional political considerations - in the upcoming parliamentary elections that were due to take place in the summer of 2005.

By the time Daouk actually assumed his responsibilities as club director, the political context in Lebanon had changed significantly. Ex-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri had been assassinated a mere weeks after the above conversation with Daouk took place, the Syrian army had withdrawn from Lebanon, and the country was going through the most acute political crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

In terms of personal biography, Daouk is a lawyer with experience in international arbitration, especially international commerce cases. Besides being on the board of

professional organisations like the ‘Arab Association for International Arbitration’ and ‘The Lebanese Association for Arbitration’, he has served as legal advisor on the boards of a number of insurance companies and banks. Although new to the world of sports, he was for 17 years head of the Beirut based charity the ‘Islamic Centre’ and at the time of the interview was head of the non-governmental organisation the ‘Beirut Gathering’ - all responsibilities that he saw as equipping him with adequate management experience to run the club.

Although involved in charitable work, Daouk did not stress this aspect of his work with Nejmeh in the way that his predecessor, Ghandour, did. What he highlighted, even more than the club’s achievement, was the impact of Hariri’s support, and he evaluated his work based on the criteria of fulfilling the duties he was entrusted with by the club’s patron.

According to Daouk, and to several other Hariri-affiliated club members, what being part of the Hariri establishment brought to Nejmeh was ‘professionalism’, and ‘managerial restructuring’. He confirmed that board members were chosen not only on the basis of their interest in football, but also, more importantly, on their professional ‘qualifications’.

Daouk’s role in the club was limited to managing it on behalf of the Hariri establishment and he had no responsibility for securing funds. In discussing the financial crisis the club was experiencing due to delays in receiving promised payments at the time of my research, he mentioned contributing financially to the club from time to time, but described how his main responsibility towards it focused more on management issues:

‘We contributed what we could as individuals and fulfilled our responsibility, each according to his capacity. I wish of course I had more resources to

contribute, but this is a club and we have families, children and their future to think about. It is a club, and I was not the one who established it, I was only entrusted to manage it, along with my colleagues on the board. We were entrusted to manage the club, not to fund it.’

Daouk stressed that the board had complete managerial independence and that the Hariri Establishment did not interfere in Nejmeh’s day-to-day running. He said ‘there is no structured relation, but there is moral supervision, and they know what is happening’.

Yet, Daouk’s relationships with the club’s patron were significantly different from those that Ghandour had with patrons during his presidency. Daouk explained that the Hariri establishment’s funding of the club imposed certain obligations, although these were not formally requested by it or outlined in a written contract: ‘we are taking money from them and they have the right to ask us what it is we are doing with the money’. These obligations went beyond financial management. Just after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon ended, two Nejmeh Asian Cup games were played in Beirut and during both matches there were clashes between opposing groups of Nejmeh’s fans. The club’s fans had factionalised along sectarian and political lines, a development which paralleled the political schism dividing the country. In coordination with his board members Daouk published a press release clearly positioning the club within the ‘family of the Future Movement’ (As-Safir

21/9/2006), an act which automatically distanced many fans who were politically opposed to the Future Movement. This press release was often cited by fans as the catalyst for non Hariri-affiliated club supporters distancing themselves from the club.⁹⁶ Commenting on the press release and the clashes in the stadium, Daouk, although apologetic and regretful about what he called the ‘misunderstanding’ that occurred in reaction to his public

statement, nevertheless affirmed his right and duty to defend the club’s patron: ‘so what, do we deny what he did? He is funding the club, and they [the fans] badmouth him and

humiliate him, badmouth his sect and humiliate it, and we are not allowed to say a word about it?’

By highlighting Hariri’s contribution and in issuing the press release, Daouk defined his role to as one devoted to ensuring that the control of the Hariri establishment over Nejmeh was maintained. His action showed how he derived his legitimacy from precisely this aspect

96 I discuss the clashes in the stadium and the press release in detail in Chapter Seven.

of his presidential role. Being the representative of the club’s patron worked to

simultaneously legitimise and delegitimise Daouk’s role; he possessed a good measure of the authority of the patron yet, paradoxically, he had little power or autonomy of his own.

He, and other new board members, were often described as ‘mere employees’, even by fans and members who saw themselves as ‘belonging to the family of the Future Movement’.

Perceived like this, Daouk and the board appeared powerless unless the work they did was obviously authorised by the club’s patron. The designation of ‘employee’ was intended as an overt criticism by some, but seen as an excuse by others for Daouk’s limited

contribution.

Figure 27: Nejmeh board members and staff visiting club patron Saad Hariri. Hariri is in the centre with the recently won trophy for Nejmeh’s LFA championship, and to his right is the Club president at the time, Mohammad Amin Daouk.⁹⁷