Soccer News of Friday, 4 July 2014

Source: The Post Newspaper

Cameroon should go for a local coach – Tchio Thomas

Limbe based Businessman and owner of the main newspaper kiosk in Limbe, Thomas Tchio, has advised that one of the solutions to the problems plaguing the Indomitable Lions was for Cameroon to go for a local coach.

Tchio, who is also an ardent football lover, supporter and sponsor, was one of the few Cameroonians who was in Brazil to watch the Lions play.

Drawing from the lessons he brought back from Brazil, Tchio said if he had the opportunity to advise the Head of State, his take will be for Cameroon to hire, rather, a Cameroonian for the coaching job of the Lions.

“We need a good coach; a committed coach. If I had to advise, because everybody knows something and nobody knows everything, if I had to advise the Head of State, I would say that we should adopt the policy of giving the Indomitable Lions to our local Cameroonians to manage,” he said and added that, “when you look at the Nigerian team play with their coach, you see the commitment.

You see that, at times, the coach can talk to his players in their own local language and they will understand.”

Some Cameroonians, have, in their own judgment, stated that in order to build a new team for the future, the current crop of players in the Lions den, especially those who were selected for the failed Brazil expedition, should out rightly be disbanded, But Tchio was of the opinion that the misfiring players in the team could be winnowed and the good ones retained.

“I think that every point counts. But we cannot solve the problem of the Lions by disbanding all the players.

In Cameroon we still have good players and Samuel Eto’o, everybody agrees, is a good player,” he said. “But I think that, at times, when they put somebody to come and re-organise FECAFOOT, he will not want to go again,” Tchio said.

Tchio’s reasoning was that Owona’s claim of staying on in order to help prepare Cameroon for the World Cup cannot be justified because, soon, Cameroon will be on its way to the nations Cup, then the Olympics and others.

“So, definitely, Owona might have to be there forever,” he said.

But since the Head of State has, Tchio said, given Prime Minister Yang the leeway to investigate into the Brazil disaster, it is not prudent for him to start x-raying certain issues.

“Let us wait for the Prime Minister to do his work,” Tchio said.