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Safeguard foreign coaches
2006-01-07 09:21:34
By Editor
President Jakaya Kikwete recently promised that his government would pay for the salaries of national team coaches, foreign or local.
The President said that his government would also invest in training coaches of various sports to ensure production of good sports people.
Kikwete’s move shows that his government is dedicated to sports and, sportsmen have been impressed so far.
The Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) has started looking for an international coach who will be paid by the government for training national team.
We, therefore, ask TFF and other sports bodies to recruit capable and qualify coaches who will uplift our sports.
We also ask sports bodies to stop interfering with coaches after recruiting them.
Coaches are people who have undergone proper training in the relevant sport and qualified to teach others in that line.
Their knowledge and skill ought to be respected and indeed it is because of the knowledge that they are trusted with the task of developing talents of others.
Having confidence in the coach is the fast step to success. If employers of an instructor have no trust in him or her for that matter, it is unlikely that the pupils or the athletes as most would say, will have faith in the teachers.
The history tells that most of the foreign coaches who come to Tanzania to teach soccer teams, are mistreated in that most of their needs were not provided, the pay was always not forthcoming timely and housing involved much quarrel.
Such unfriendly relationship so to speak, has pushed many a foreign coach to terminate their contracts and quit their jobs unceremoniously.
This time we do not want the same thing to happen and if possible, coaches who will be given a contract to train our sportsmen and ladies of the track should work under the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports so that the relevant sports associations don’t interfere with them in their duties.
At club level, foreign coaches who have trained top teams such as Yanga and Simba, have left their jobs and gone away, leaving behind success and pride.
Another example was seen in early 2000s, when the world governing soccer body, FIFA, offered to give German coach Pape Burkhard to come and head the technical bench in Tanzania.
Mr Burhard was under the pay of FIFA but the then Tanzania Football Association (FAT) now Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) interfered with him in his work, forcing him to quit his job and return to Germany.
We ask the government to look into the welfare of foreign coaches employed to train our teams.
If the problem is their wage, the ministry relevant should from the initial stages of employing the coach be involved and issues that threaten to be thorny be ironed out early at the employment stage to avert such embarrassing terminations of contract.
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