Letter to the Editor-Please, stop interfering! |06 January 2010

Seychelles, who will host the Games for a second time, have never won gold and Swede Holmlünd’s primary task was to make sure the Pirates would be contenders for the gold medal.

An optimistic Holmlünd was once quoted as saying: “The federation has put in the right structures and now it’s up to the players to add some success on the pitch to what has been done so far on the administrative side.”
Now what has really gone wrong in such a short time?

It would be interested to hear from the federation the real story behind Holmlünd’s unexpected departure.
In fact, Holmlünd was Seychelles’ sixth foreign coach in almost 17 years. Before him, we had German Helmut Kosmehl (from 1992 to 1993), Yugoslav Vojo Gardasevic (from 1997 to 2000), Frenchman Dominique Bathenay (from May 2002 to November 2002), German Michael Nees (from 2002 to 2004) and Congolese Raoul Shungu (from 2004 to 2008).

The last Seychellois to coach the country’s senior team is Ulric ‘Keker’ Mathiot, and that was in 1991. But despite being the most knowledgeable Seychellois coach, Mathiot has failed to win any kind of success with the national team.

Certainly, there have been too many ins and outs in this noble task in recent years, and in many circumstances it turned sour as everyone wanted to be involved in the team’s affairs, selection, etc…

Every coach wants to have the liberty to plan his work without the interference of the SFF executive committee.

For me, if the situation continues the same there won’t be any improvement even if the SFF hires the best coach in the world.

With the kind of players we have here, it is difficult for club sides to reach the group stage of an African club competition, and therefore it will be difficult to have a good national team.

The fact that we don’t have a Seychellois coach is a sign that we have failed.
However, our footballing history has proved that Englishman Adrian Fisher was not only the key figure behind the development of football in Seychelles but remains at the forefront as the best foreign coach Seychelles has ever had.

And now, who has got the magic wand to turn things around drastically and spearhead Seychelles to win gold in 2011?

Are the likes of Ralph Jean-Louis, Brian Uranie, Marc Mathiot, Roger Labonté or Cliff Nolin keen on taking up the challenge?

Derek Pothin

Editor’s note:
The SFF called Seychelles Nation on Monday January 4 to explain why coach Richard Holmlünd quit his job.
For more details, see the article entitled ‘Holmlünd quit for personal reasons, says SFF’.