Sporting eye European coach

FROM NT NETWORK
Posted on 2009-06-26
MARGAO: Sporting Clube de Goa has always been considered as one of the top title-challengers in the I-League.
Although a new season beckons Sporting, they are yet to find a suitable person, after firing former coach Clifford Chukuwama, but club chief Mr Peter Vaz seems totally unperturbed at the unusual proceedings.
With the team practice starting July 2, it is unlikely that Sporting will rush into acquiring a new coach with Mr Vaz disclosing about Manipuri trainer Jitendra Singh taking charge of the initial process with assistant coach Anthony Levino Pereira and Severino Fernandes to aid him.
We don’t want to turn and see what has been left behind. We have to continue and I am sure about the capabilities of my men to give us the necessary head start in the beginning. Our coaches are well experienced and they’ll be there for
the pro-league and then we will see what has to be done,” Mr Vaz explained nonchalantly.
The promotion of Jitendra to the hot seat may raise quite a few eyebrows but Mr Vaz is confident that the AFC ‘A’ Licence holder has all the required norms to lead the team and disclosed that Sporting Clube will not suffer after the departure of Clifford Chukuwama. “No not at all, I don’t think so, he doesn’t really have those necessary qualifications. We had to strictly follow the AIFF guidelines and we can’t afford to keep people aboard just to save their skins. He had to go to make way for better, professional and competent personnel. We have to move forward and improve our profile,” Mr Vaz told ‘The Navhind Times’ before dropping enough hints of a possible European coach taking the reigns of the team for the I-League campaign.
The capital city based construction magnate who ploughed his resources in building Sporting into a formidable team is happy that the ‘Orange’ brigade were able to retain the services of many of their important players with only midfielders Mickey Fernandes and Harmonjot Khabra parting ways for Mohun Bagan and East Bengal respectively. Sporting which fend off advances of possible suitors for the Nigerian strike pair of Junior Obagmiro and Nathaniel Amos further strengthened the side with the recruitment of Nigerian midfield lynchpin Michael Tayo from Air-India.
With the AIFF relaxing rules on the players of Asian origin, Sporting also reserved the option of signing a player form either Bangladesh or even Pakistan but the priority remains for a top notch European coach for which the football crazy Sporting boss has already short-listed 3 names.
We have been in contact with three foreign coaches who are all based in Europe and I can only say that the process is just in the infant stages, but there’s even possibility of Sporting getting a big name from Europe,” Mr Vaz concluded.