Inside Arabian Falcons: The Dubai football side managed by Jonjo Shelvey
Arabian Falcons have just re-signed Jonjo Shelvey as their manager, with the Dubai football team boasting off-pitch figures such as Jason Puncheon. Matt Hardy investigates
Hear someone discussing Arabian Falcons and it would be easy to assume they were talking about either the Peregrine or the Saker – two heritage symbols of the Middle East associated with pride and wealth among Gulf nations.
Equally, an image that Arabian Falcons may not conjure up is one of ex-England midfielder Jonjo Shelvey, journeyman Jason Puncheon and former Manchester United prodigy Ravel Morrison.
Yet in Jebel Ali, Dubai – where a new UFO-like construction project is set to result in the Emirate’s longest beach – those three men sit with sporting director Harry Agombar, one of the youngest Brits to hold that position.
Together they form the coaching and ownership team of the Falcons, founded in 2023 and now with a first team in the UAE Second Division and a developing pathway further down the pyramid.
“Harry was the coach and came to the boys about investing in a team and taking it forward,” Puncheon tells CityAM. “Then we’ve snowballed with a lot of things in the background and now Harry’s in the sporting director role.”
Agombar adds: “I’m heavily invested in the club in terms of what I’ve been doing over the last three years. Dubai is such an unbelievable city, and I think the pull was more to the older players who were finishing their careers – and the lifestyle and the beauty.
“It’s changed a lot now. The beauty of Division Three and Division Two with the foreign players [limits being more relaxed], it really is a chance to get some young lads from Africa and South America, and that’s been our model since day one.
Arabian Falcons flying high?
“We had success from the first year with players going into Belgium, Denmark and England, and that’s the ultimate goal – to better these boys’ careers and lifestyle.”
The club, with its mix of domestic and overseas shareholders, has undergone a rebrand in the off-season ahead of their first game in the next chapter of Shelvey’s managerial career.
Puncheon insists that the opportunity the 34-year-old, six-cap England player has in managing Arabian Falcons is one that he wouldn’t get in England, stating that “he’d be in an academy going into under-16 or under-18 coaching”.
“That’s the reality,” he adds. “These opportunities are few and far between as English coaches. We don’t have many English managers around the world, and I always say that the moment you find the opportunity to go abroad as an English coach, do it.”
Youth is the theme in Dubai, too, with Agombar, 33, insisting that there is a new wave of sporting directors waiting to take the reins at the world’s top clubs – with a different mindset.
“It’s just the world of today,” he says. “The younger generation have come through with a different way of thinking that I think has changed football for good. The young, fresh ideas, they’re ahead of the times, and I think that’s what helps.”
Arabian Falcons have entered into a partnership with USL League Two team Brooke House FC in the United States, and actively target overseas players with benefits that also include accommodation.
The team wants to change the way the UAE is seen – currently a place for older players, like Saudi Arabia – and that’s admirable, but Arabian Falcons are now built on that very foundation – with former player Shelvey its fresh face.