ASHIHUNDU: Problems at ‘Ingwe’ deeper than coaching

The habit of recruiting players and handing them over to coaches has seen good tacticians walk out of their contracts at “The Den” after falling out with the management.

This hiring and firing norm, which is fast-becoming a permanent fixture at Ingwe, must stop to prevent brokerage and salvage our ounce mighty giants. I came up with this topic after news emerged that a foreign has been hired to take over from young Marko Vaslijevic.

That’s why Sunday’s 4-1 loss to Bandari doesn’t shock me. At any club, a new coach must be given a free hand to choose his technical bench as well as selecting a team for the next season.

When a coach takes over a team like AFC Leopards, a five-month period is too short to make any meaningful changes to the club. He needs patience to enable him draft out a plan for the future.

When Dennis Kitambi took over from Robert Matano on interim basis, we needed to be patience especially given that many players including Dennis Sikhayi Moses Mburu, Marvin Nabwire, Jaffery Odeny, Vincent Oburu, Aziz Okaka, Yusuf Mainge, Brian Marita are still maturing.

It’s not surprising that we had poor record for the last three years. The controversial way in which Ivan Minnaet, Dorian Marin, John Stewarts Hall, Matano, Kitambi, Rodolfo Zapata and Nicola Kavazovic is still fresh in the minds of Ingwe fans.

The last was Kavazovic after he was treated to unprofessional conduct by the National Executive Committee (NEC), the Serbian diplomatically threw in the towel under the pretext that he was going home to Serbia to attend to his sick father, only for news to emerge that he was in South Africa where he was employed by Free State Stars.

The former Township Rollers of Bostwana coach, who had penned a two-year contract with Ingwe, took over from Zapata who had signed from Gaborone United and left for his home in the United States of America, only to turn up in Bostwana as coach of Township Rollers.
Zapata, who later guided Leopards to finish seventh in the 2018 Kenyan Premier League was the 25th coach since Ingwe returned to the top flight in 2009.

When Robert Bhollen was shown the door barely a week after he joined the club, the former Eritrea coach insisted that he parted ways with the board which was not ready to return back the lost past glory of Ingwe, contrary to the club’s position that he had failed out with players as well as the technical bench.

John Stewarts Hall who had vowed to turn around the club’s fortunes after replacing caretaker Ezekiel Akwana left briefly joined Ethiopian giants St Georges before he took a flight to India before crossing over to Bangladesh where he was joined by his long-time friend Dennis Kitambi at Saif Sporting Club.

The Englishman had emerged the best to coach Ingwe from over 20 interviewed for the job.
Hard questions must be asked.

What special qualities do Bonventure Kaheza, Yeka Tatuwe, Isaac Oduro or Baker Lukooya have that local players don’t have?

Even harder questions must be put to the NEC.

What special qualities to the likes of Joshua Mawira, Christpher Orchum have to continue being in the team unless they are clients of some NEC members? When NEC was told to go for proven quality players like Elvis Rupia, James Mazembe, Clifton Miheso, they opted for free agents.

It’s curious NEC can sell players like Michael Kibwage. AFC Leopards fans and even well-wishers must come to terms with the fact that this is going to be our worst year.

Relegation is a possibility, while humiliation by averaged teams like Kakamega Homeboyz, Kariobangi Sharks, Bandari among others is something Ingwe fans should be accustomed to, and that is the brutal truth.

I think the coach is not our problem. The problem is much deeper at Ingwe!

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