However, he was not the winner; he was Manuel Jose, whose strategies were the reason behind Ahli's draw against Sfaxien in the first leg of the African Champions League final.

Actually, Jose has been known as an arrogant coach since his first stint in 2001 and his tongue smacked almost every football-linked person in Egypt and Africa during his second spell that started midway through the 2003-2004 season and till now.

His brilliant record of two Egyptian League titles and as many African Champions League trophies, winning the African Super Cup and the Egyptian Super Cup was the shield that protected and backed his behavior.

But apart from his Portugal-sized ego, what can currently be fueling his arrogance with Ahli suffering a drastic setback in performance and results?

The African champions, who clinched their last Champions League title without a defeat, lost two times in this campaign in Tunisia and Ivory Coast with the latest, according to his confession, putting his side at the verge of elimination from the semis.

Locally, Ahli are not playing their usual electric game. They are threatened every single game and were held twice by Arab Contractors and second-from-bottom Tersana, who collected only four points from nine games so far.

A deeper look into the team affairs can reveal that Jose is not doing his homework anymore as a result of the super-coach cape that he never takes off.

The players' fitness cannot help them past the first-half of any game and leaves them chasing shadows after every interval because Jose insists on fielding his first-choice stars no matter how strong or weak the opponents are.

He has never benefited from his 29-man squad unless he was forced to due to injuries that many of them were sustained due to exhaustion and overplaying policy.

Mohamed Abou-Treika's knee injury is the clearest example.

A New-signing like striker Rami Rabie was given too little chances to prove his worth despite Ahli's desperate need for scorers with Emad Meteb’s form getting worse and Angola's Flavio notching just five league goals in 15 months.

Promising players such as Amr Fathi 'Samaka', Wael Riyad, Ahmed Hassan, Mohamed Abdullah and Ahmed Sedik are usually overlooked for no specific reason, although Ahli fought to sign them.

Despite all of the above, Jose has never had enough courage (or may be enough insight) to say, even once, that he was wrong.

He believes he always uses the perfect formations, selects the suitable players, makes the right substitutions, and does all what a world-class coach can do.

Then why the bad displays and deteriorating results… Jose never runs out of excuses.

It either bad pitches, bad refereeing, bad Egyptian and African Football Associations, bad weather, bad luck or finally bad players playing like 'cartoons' according to Saint Jose.

But Jose is about to discover that he can be the comic book cartoon that has been promoted to a super hero by Egyptians who are likely going to send him to history books soon.