Football The dilemma of the Seychelles national team |20 April 2017
We learned on Tuesday that Nigel Freminot who had been named as national team head coach to lead the Seychelles’ team in the coming African National Championship (Chan) and eventually Confédération Africaine de Football (Caf) qualifying matches will finally not be sitting on the Seychelles bench as he does not hold a class A or B license.
If the Caf decision has not come as a surprise, what is sure is that it adds to the dilemma currently faced by our national football team. And the question which begs is, with only his class C license, should Nigel Freminot had been named as head coach by the Seychelles Football Federation (SFF) in the first place? Maybe Freminot himself should not have accepted the job, knowing that he would not be up to the task due to his lack of qualifications. We have even learned that his position as coach of first division side St Louis was recently at stake and that the central Mahé club had called in another coach to direct training sessions. At least one other local coach claims to have been contacted for the post. If he was nearly not fit for St Louis, should he have been fit for the more demanding and challenging job of national team coach?
Incidentally, a license C does not even permit somebody to be head coach of a first division team in Seychelles!
Surprising also, Basil Hoareau was appointed assistant coach even though he holds a B license, compared to Freminot’s license C! Not forgetting that Hoareau is coach of lowly Revengers who have been always fighting against relegation since making it to the top flight some years back.
Worse of all, the situation now leaves the national selection practically without a coach as former SFF chairman Joel Decommarmond who should have originally been the selection’s manager and who has been asked to replace Freminot on the team sheet, has not been in coaching for almost a decade now. This, since he was at the head of The Lions Football Club when the latter were still playing in the second division. Although he holds a class A license, with his inexperience having never led a top first division team, the scenario is far from being an ideal one.
We are also obliged to ask where is the last technical and administrative team who were doing a good job with the national team last year, with good results against Ethiopia, Lesotho and Algeria?
The federation never explained why Bruno Saindina was not kept, why Ralph Jean-Louis’ contract was not renewed, and why Don Anacoura and Mike Delpech who stood respectively as assistant coach and administrator were not called back!
Foreign coach
Also, we may need a foreign coach in order to raise our level of play and as qualified and experienced ones for the national team job are scarce locally. However, we should not ‒ as has been the case ‒ recruit an unknown technical advisor with no particular reference. Local coaches working with younger selections have also complained that while a foreigner has been recruited, they have not been paid their allowances!
Here, the federation should also put into place a proper youth development structure with junior leagues involving all footballers in these age ranges, instead of having two permanent selections regrouping only about 40 players.
Apart from the technical aspect, the national selection’s preparations for the match to be played against Mauritius this weekend can only be described as catastrophic, for seemingly the following reasons:
- Players from the inner islands had to apparently pay their own air/boat fares to and from Mahé with the promise of being refunded. When will the SFF will refund them? Those same players did not attend the last training session before the team flew to Mauritius on Tuesday. The fact that they left on Tuesday leads to another question: Why, when there is a flight to the neighbouring island on Thursday? Incidentally, Gervais Waye-Hive which all indications show will be the team’s captain is travelling alone on Thursday. His grandmother has unfortunately passed away and we are sympathetic to a professional-minded player like Gervais, even if he has not been on his top form since the start of the season. But as a matter of discipline and good preparation, should he not have been dropped for this away match if unable to travel with the rest of the team?
- It has also been observed that the players have not been issued with sufficient equipment such as football boots. There even seemed not to have sufficient amount of water at some training sessions.
- There also seemed to have issues with the delegation’s travelling insurance till the last minute.
Promises
Meanwhile, after the last training session on Monday, the players were promised a training camp in Morocco later this year. However, a training camp was also promised in October 2015 when a selection was leaving for Burundi. Some players were also promised trials in Malaysia in 2016.
Nothing has materialised to date, although we will argue that the onus of sending players on trial should fall on the clubs and not the federation. Also, training camps should not be promised in order to raise players’ morale: As any national team gathering, they should only be held in preparation for a match or competition. This also permits to remind that a player belongs to his club and not to the national team. We should thus break away from the idea of a permanent national selection and players should only be called for a match or competition based on their current form, and not only by their name.
It is evident that the coaches have not chosen the best players for the coming matches. Should for example Ryan Antat have not been called as a striker, Nelson Laurence as a right back, Joshua Adeline as a defensive midfielder and Graham Cafrine as a winger?
It is however not too late to remedy the situation: If we have to think of a qualified and experienced national team coach for the long term, we can in the short term name another head coach and technical team. This can be done for the coming Caf qualifiers.
Contributed