Pitso Mosimane has made a good case for local coaches

Moira Mosimane and Pisto Mosimane

Al Ahly's South African coach Pitso Mosimane raises the Caf Champions league aloft with his wife, Moira.

Photo credit: Pool |

What you need to know:

  • Mosimane underlined his already hugely impressive tactical credentials by delivering the continental title to his new employers.
  • In doing so, he became only the third coach to win the Caf Champions League title with two different clubs, having clinched his maiden trophy with Mamelodi Sundowns in 2016.

AFC Leopards have yet again been duped by a foreign coach. Barely a month after announcing that they had finally found a coach who would make the club great again, Ingwe have been left high and dry.

For all the hype that surrounded his unveiling, Czech national Tomas Trucha chose to leave the club in a huff on Thursday, citing unsubstantiated threats to his agent's life.

Twenty-four hours later, it emerged that the ‘threats’ claims may just as well have been a cock and bull story as news came through that Trucha had landed a new job in Malaysia.

Sounds familiar? Well, before Trucha’s deceitful and dishonourable act of truancy, a certain Serbian by the name Nikola Kavazovic played a similar cat and mouse game with Ingwe some two years ago before dumping the club and taking charge of South African side Free State Stars.

At the time of his defection, Kavazovic had barely spent three weeks at Ingwe’s den.

Now Leopards, who overlooked old boy Anthony 'Modo' Kimani in appointing the long-gone Trucha, have to start all over again.

It got me thinking about an interesting conversation I recently had with a colleague of mine, who is in fact a dyed-in-the-wool Gor Mahia apologist.

Our conversation was about foreign and local coaches in the FKF Premier League. My colleague was of the view that the Sh100,000 accreditation fee that clubs are required to pay the federation upon hiring a foreign coach is exorbitant and ‘unfair’ to clubs like Gor Mahia which long ceased doing business with local coaches.

But why must a must ‘poor’ club like Gor Mahia keep hiring foreign coaches, if they can’t even raise the accreditation fee?

Well, it’s because K’Ogalo fans can’t accept a local coach; they would practically run the poor fellow out of town even before the ink dries on his contract, my colleague countered.

'Almost lynched'

He had a point. A few years ago Zedekiah ‘Zico’ Otieno, one of the last local coaches to handle Gor Mahia, was almost lynched by angry fans after a league match that didn’t go the club’s way.

But even so, I don’t buy the notion that any Kenyan club is too big for a local coach. If that was the case, then the decorated South African coach Pitso Mosimane wouldn’t be basking in the glory of guiding continental powerhouses Al Ahly to a record-extending ninth African crown.

Consider this. In its 113 years of existence, the fabled Cairo club had only been coached by European, South American and Egyptian coaches. That was until Mosimane arrived in early October to become the club’s first non-Egyptian African coach.

And true to expectation, Mosimane underlined his already hugely impressive tactical credentials by delivering the continental title to his new employers.

In doing so, he became only the third coach to win the Caf Champions League title with two different clubs, having clinched his maiden trophy with Mamelodi Sundowns in 2016.

In all fairness, though, Mosimane would be a tough act for any Kenyan coach to follow.

But his staggering achievements have made a very good case for local coaches.