Nuttal in trouble over unsporting behaviour

Greetings from the town of Wa in northern Ghana! For almost a month now, the news on the lips of every football lover in this football-mad nation is the scandal around former Gor Mahia coach Frank Nuttal.

According to the leading Ghanaian football portal ghanasoccernet.com, Nuttal is now facing the real and present danger of being hauled to court over his alleged underhand dealings while serving as the coach of local giants Hearts of Oak.

The report says that Nuttal, who in 2015 won the Kenya Premiership unbeaten with K’Ogalo, could be charged with fraud and corruption despite his dismissal from the club for “unsporting” and “unethical” behaviours.

The Scot is alleged to have pocketed US$ 56,000 (almost Sh5.6 million) from the ‘illegal transfer of some players’, according to leaked findings by a three-member committee of board members tasked with investigating the European gaffer. 

The article claims that a committee that was set up to probe Nuttal found alleged links between the tactician and the Scottish firm NM Football Consultancy, as collaborators for the transfer of players of Hearts.

Nuttall is said to have told the Committee: ‘’ It’s a difference of understanding pertaining to the job. It is an error of judgement on my part for not informing the board and the administration (for which) I apologise to the committee and I plead that it should not cost me my job.’’

It looks like it is going to be a tragic end to one of the finest coaches I have ever seen on the African continent.

Still on coaches, I still maintain that Nick Mwendwa will one day be judged to be the most catastrophic thing that ever happened to Kenyan football.

Today I have beef with Mwendwa over the resignation of Paul Put (as an aside, the man’s name always reminds me of Pol Pot).

Watching the man on TV wheezing in his high-pitched soprano talking about anything and everything football, I am convinced with each passing day that Mwendwa was hoisted on the Kenyan football public by some forces who did not actually know what the man can offer.

He comes across as clueless as a chicken tossed in the sea. Making promises like a snake oil salesman. Promises that are never met. Just exactly what is this man’s agenda for Kenya’s football?

Reading about Put’s alleged resignation in this newspaper saying that he left Kenya with a broken heart left my own heart very broken. According to the Belgian,  he had to resign “to protect his impressive reputation on the continent.”

While to the under-bred guttersnipes in charge of Kenyan football resignation is a strange animal that rarely passes near our neck of the woods, the truth of the matter is that there are people out there who value their name more than anything else.

Unfortunately, in their search for daily bread and fame, such honourable men and women are forced to rub shoulders with lowlifes who can’t appreciate a good thing even if it hit them on the nose.