ACTUALITE |
28.04.2003
Controversial involvement of traditional rulers in soccer management
By Ndibala Jaff in Douala
Traditional rulers are known to have taken interest in the management of football clubs. Their involvement in managing some renowned football teams has sparked off tidal waves of controversies.
Most football watchers cannot fathom meaning in the crave manifest in some chiefs to accumulate traditional and football management powers. It has been suggested that soccer being a lucrative game today is an irresistible bait to some of our chieftains.
Nevertheless, drunk with traditional authority, chiefs may want to extend some of their many tentacles of power into football.
Examples of soccer manager-chiefs abound but the cases of Douala’s King Din Dika Akwa III and Banso’s Fon Sehm Mbinglo II are glaring.
As dust is still to settle on the devastating conflict in Caiman FC Douala, football analysts who understand the Akwa team’s affairs have blamed their monarch for igniting the crisis.
King Akwa III, it should be recalled, dismissed Charles Anatole Mboule Njoh from Caiman’s leadership for unexplained reasons. He replaced Mboule with Ebongue Milla to the disgust of many of the team’s admirers.
Caiman then split into two camps with players, coach and most supporters standing by Mboule while the king camped with Milla. It was this fissure, observers believed that almost drowned Caiman in the ongoing championship.
Public talk in Douala was against the intervention of the monarch in Caiman’s management. As a patron, many people believed he should have been hands off Caiman’s running. Others wondered why King Akwa should appoint a president who normally was supposed to be elected.
Sources close to Caiman’s leadership alleged their chief contributed less to its financial requirements, meantime supporters claimed Mboule alone bore over 90 percent of the costs to bring back the team to division I.
The King’s supporters intimated Mboule lost his job after it was discovered he erected a racket to sell players. Mboule on the alternative argued that he sold players to buy others and bring in highly qualified technicians like the Turkish trainer, Alpalson Mahmut.
In a similar way, Sehm Mbinglo’s management of Kumbo Strikers failed to satisfy its supporters, most of whom do not exonerate him from the blame for the team’s descent into Division II. Reports said some of the Nso Fon’s predecessors had dragged him to court to explain certain accusations of financial misappropriation.
When asked to comment, football analysts expressed the wish to have chiefs off soccer management.
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Hits: 1 | Source:The Herald | |
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