By Kemoh Sesay
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has in correspondence to the Football Association stated that "the level of the coaching license is still on its first level ‘C’ and will be raised to ‘B’ next year then to ‘A’ later.
According to the Director of the Football Development Division of CAF Abdel Moniem Hussein, the coaching license policy was applied last year to all inter club competitions and CAF tournaments,"Coaches without CAF ‘C’ license will not be allowed to enter the field of play."
CAF was responding to President Isha Johansen’s question of AttoMensah’s qualifications as head coach with regards his licenses.
In an email conversation with the SLFA president Isha Johansen, Hussein writes…”Yes, if he has only B license then he should only train young boys according to UEFA license criteria. He can’t train in Europe above 16 years with the UEFA B license. No national team in the world recruit a coach with less than PRO license. You need to win with qualified coach. The pressure will be high over the association when results are not good. You must bring a coach to convince the media and people. Please take this matter seriously to your federation."
Chris Kamara, SLFA Secretary General said it was on the basis of this email from CAF that they rejected the appointment of the coaches selected by the ministry of sports and went ahead to appoint John Ajina Sesay as head coach and Abdulai Bah aka Kaloga as his assistant.
But sports minister Paul Kamara, the SLFA signed up to the appointment of Mensah and Sama at a meeting to be in charge of the team for the remaining AFCON matches but they changed their minds later on.
Kamara said "several coaches have been appointed to head the national team without any qualification why is it only now that the SLFA is doing this?… they only want to show disrespect for me as a sports minister of this country."
The minister said he has made the issue known to the president of Sierra Leone, because "this is unacceptable".
Meanwhile contrary to reports in Freetown that the national had been unable to train since they landed in Cameroun on Monday, a Sierra Leonean journalist who traveled to Yaoundé to cover the matches said Coach AttoMensah and assistant John Sama have conducted two training sessions.
Frank Cole posted pictures of the training sessions on social media. The picture has gone viral. Coaches appointed by the SLFA left Freetown yesterday for Yaounde.
(C) Politico 09/10/14
