The newspaper “The Athletic,” affiliated with “The New York Times,” published a strange story in which English coach Adrian Heath claims to have been kidnapped in Tangier, after being “lured and recruited” by an alleged Saudi sheikh in hopes of working in Saudi Arabia.
The story that the newspaper itself said “it does not believe” seems strange, unconvincing, and incoherent.
What’s the story?
The coach told the newspaper that in the summer of 2024, he received an offer from a British agent for a coaching position in the Saudi league. After lengthy discussions that included salary, budget, housing, and healthcare details, and after consulting figures like Steven Gerrard (who previously worked in Saudi Arabia), Heath agreed to travel to Morocco to meet the alleged “sheikh” who owns the club, which has hotels and businesses in the Moroccan city.
On November 18, 2024, Heath landed at Tangier Airport, where he was greeted by two men who handed him a bouquet of flowers and transported him in a black sedan. But after about 40 minutes, they veered off the highway towards a suspicious neighborhood near the sea, then brought him into a small smoke-filled apartment, where three men were waiting for him.
The coach stated that they proceeded to hold him captive and demanded money for his release, and amid threats with a knife, they called his wife in the United States to send money. The wife refused to send the money on the grounds that she did not have enough funds.
Faced with the inability to send money through his family, the coach says he decided to negotiate with them and informed his captors that they would not receive anything, and that they must allow him to leave until he could send the money himself after returning home.
In light of this situation, the coach said that the gang, after only 24 hours, decided to return him to the car and took him to Ibn Battuta Airport, where they disposed of him near the entrance and fled.
Thus easily, the coach says he headed to the airport and quickly traveled to Madrid, and that the kidnappers backed down and abandoned months of planning to recruit him.
