Al-Ittihad club management has agreed with German Jens Fessing to take over as head coach of the first football team for the new season, replacing Portuguese Sergio Conceição. The “Riyadiya - Urgent” account reported on Saturday that the Japanese Gamba Osaka coach (38 years old) is on the verge of joining the Jeddah-based club. Fessing began his coaching career eight seasons ago, after injury ended his professional playing career with Borussia Mönchengladbach, and he moved to work as an assistant coach for the reserve team for two seasons (2019-2021), before moving to Dutch PSV Eindhoven as an assistant to compatriot Roger Schmidt from 2021 to 2022, continuing his journey also as an assistant with the latter at Benfica from 2022 to 2024. In early June 2025, he worked as an assistant with his compatriot Thomas Litsch at Salzburg in Austria, during the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, and lasted about five months, until he announced his contract with Gamba Osaka in January 2026 as head coach. The AFC Cup 2, hosted by Al-Awwal Park Stadium in Riyadh last May 16, was the first official tournament he won as coach with Gamba Osaka, when he defeated Al-Nassr 1-0 in the final. As assistant coach, Fessing won the Cup and Super Cup titles with PSV, and the league and Super Cup titles with Benfica. Al-Ittihad will begin its preparations for the new season with medical examinations for players before starting training on July 7, then it will travel to Marbella, Spain on July 14 to enter an external camp that continues until July 31 before returning to Jeddah. Al-Ittihad is expected to kick off the new season's competitions with a match against Al-Jazira of the UAE on August 11 in Abu Dhabi, as part of the AFC Champions League Elite play-offs.