Lo­cal coach only for Sabah Pre­mier League squad

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah FA an­nounced yes­ter­day that it would only con­sider hir­ing a lo­cal coach to take charge of its Pre­mier League squad next sea­son.

The de­ci­sion has been de­scribed as po­ten­tially dis­as­trous with fans in­ter­pret­ing it as a step back­wards with high ex­pec­ta­tions of a to­tal re­vamp in­clud­ing a move to rope in high qual­ity per­son­nel and play­ers, in­clud­ing coaches.

It seems the de­ci­sion by Safa is guided by bud­get con­straints, or per­haps sim­ply their re­fusal to splurge on top qual­ity tal­ent.

This sus­pi­cion is sup­ported by the un­pop­u­lar de­ci­sion made by the FA ear­lier this year to go mainly with lo­cal tal­ents, which has ob­vi­ously back­fired hav­ing failed to trans­late into the top five fin­ish tar­geted by the team’s man­ager Datuk Nizam Abu Bakar Titin­gan.

How­ever, Safa deputy pres­i­dent 1 Datuk Taw­fiq Abu Bakar Titin­gan main­tained the de­ci­sion was fi­nal and that it was made af­ter tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion sev­eral con­tribut­ing fac­tors dur­ing an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“Among the main fac­tors is com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween coaches and play­ers, which was said to have plagued the squad for sev­eral sea­sons.

“What we want is a coach who can re­ally make an im­pact and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in this re­gard is very im­por­tant. The play­ers must be able to un­der­stand in or­der to ex­e­cute what is re­quired of them from the coach,” said Taw­fiq, who is also Min­is­ter of Youth and Sports.

He said the “com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lem” was not just faced by the play­ers but also the as­sis­tant coaches, who re­port­edly faced difficulty in­ter­pret­ing the head coach’s mes­sage to the play­ers.

“This af­fects the way the team plays be­cause they do not fully un­der­stand the coach’s or­ders, in­clud­ing in terms of strate­gies and so on,” said Taw­fiq, cit­ing the dis­as­trous sea­son en­dured af­ter Safa’s ap­point­ment of sea­soned Croatian coach Vjeran Simu­nic as its Pre­mier League head coach last sea­son.

On the con­trary, Sabah flour­ished under Aus­tralian coach Gary Phillips, who guided the team to Su­per League pro­mo­tion in 2010.

Mean­while, Tafwiq said sev­eral lo­cal in­di­vid­u­als have been sighted for the va­cant head coach slot and that scru­tiny would al­low Safa to se­lect the most suit­able can­di­date for the job.

How­ever, Taw­fiq could make no con­fir­ma­tion as he said the mat­ter was still under dis­cus­sion and that it would only be fi­nalised later when prepa­ra­tion for the 2017 sea­son is nearer.

“There are also a num­ber of coaches from the penin­sula who vol­un­teered to han­dle the team but we are still look­ing for one who is most suit­able with­out rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­ity that it could be a Saba­han,” he said.

In an­other devel­op­ment, Taw­fiq said the play­ers se­lec­tion com­mit­tee headed by deputy pres­i­dent 2 Datuk Lawrence Gim­bang will soon get crack­ing on se­lect­ing qual­i­fied play­ers to don Sabah colours next sea­son.

“Those in the com­mit­tee in­clude vice pres­i­dent Datuk Yu­sof Kas­sim, Malaysia’s liv­ing legends Datuk Has­san Sani and Datuk James Wong and for­mer state play­ers Jelius At­ing and Burhan Ajui.

For the record, Sabah under its head coach prior to the Simu­nic reign also failed to make a pos­i­tive im­pact when it ap­pointed for­mer Rhi­nos player Ses­lija Milomir.

Real Madrid’s Por­tuguese for­ward Cris­tiano Ron­aldo (C) goes down af­ter a chal­lange by Le­gia Warsaw’s Czech de­fender Adam Hlousek (L) and Le­gia Warsaw’s de­fender Jakub Rzezniczak vie for the ball dur­ing the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League group F football match Le­gia Warsaw vs Real Madrid CF in Warsaw, Poland on Novem­ber 2, 2016. - AFP photo

Taw­fiq