Unhappy at the Den
AFC Leopards’ head coach Tomas Trucha is set to give his final position today, regarding his stay at the club following reports that his agent, Prince Channis, has received threats from a section of the club loyalists.
Trucha had spoken of interference with his job immediately after their convincing 2-1 win over league rivals Tusker at the weekend.
“There is a serious issue with the coach and we shall do a press conference on Thursday morning where the coach is set to give his position.
It is unfortunate that some people who masquerade as AFC fans are trying to distabilise the team.
They have seen us doing well and are not happy. They are trying to kill the work that the National Executive Committee (NEC) has done,” said club chairman Dan Shikanda, further stating that there are no rifts in the NEC.
Shikanda says the threats from people he termed as ‘other agents,’ have made the coach very uncomfortable and he feels unsafe.
The decision on whether he stays or leaves has been left to the 47 year old Czech Republic national.
The tactician feels that threats to his agent amount to threats to himself.
“We do not know what these people want and the coach is definitely not happy with what is happening.
The same people were peddling lies that the coach does not have papers, calling him a tourist until they saw his credentials.
His qualifications must have disappointed them as they lost an avenue to fight the club leadership.
He is here to help us but they have decided to distabilise him and make sure he cannot focus.
We have taken their threats seriously and are giving statements to the police,” added Shikanda promising to name and shame the said individuals during today’s press conference.
Trucha, a UEFA Pro licensed coach was unveiled at AFC on November 2, signing a two year contract and was tasked with delivering the league title that has eluded the 13-time league title holder for 22 years.
Before moving to ‘Ingwe’ following the exit of Casa Mbungo he had coached Botswana’s Township Rollers and Orapa United.
Additionally, the club chair claims that the same group of people was behind Duncan Otieno’s move to Lusaka Dynamos despite an already signed contract to get back in the Den, having left in 2018.
“The same people lured Otieno to Zambia and now they want to blame it on the NEC.
We procedurally contracted Otieno to once again play for us upon expiry of his contract with Nkana FC of Zambia that ended on October 31.
The player claimed that Dynamos had paid AFC for his transfer but that is not true.
We wanted to take things to another level but having been a footballer myself; we had agreed that when a better offer comes we would be open to releasing him.
However, that was subject to him playing for us first,” explained Shikanda.
The chairperson shed some more light on the Otieno issue saying that the player only called him to inform of his intended return to Zambia for two days to clear with Nkana and come back to Kenya.
According to Shikanda, Nkana sold Otieno to Dynamos and refused to accord AFC the Third Party Ownership. AFC is yet to receive any payment for Otieno’s move to Dynamos.
