Malta’s national football team coach, Tom Saintfiet, has been given the sack after he reportedly replied to a call for a position within the Cameroonian Football Federation.

The Malta Football Association has released a statement relating to his departure.

“Following a thorough analysis of the situation, a decision has been taken to relieve Mr Saintfiet of his duties as National Team Coach. To this end, the Malta Football Association communicates that the employment contract of Tom Saintfiet has been terminated with immediate effect,” the Association said.

Saying they sought “reassurances” from Mr Saintfelt about reports that he had not applied for the post of coach of another national team, they ended the meeting with his termination.

The 45-year-old Belgian has denied these reports, saying he never applied for a job in Cameroon, and saying that even the Cameroonian Football Federation themselves admit that many coaches do not know that someone applied in their name.

“There are agents who do it without informing the coaches. I had applied for the Cameroon job in 2012, 2014 and 2015, but this year I am very happy to be in Malta with my family and have a long-term commitment. I have no reason to apply anywhere else, and I never sent any application,” he told Maltatoday.

He’s since removed a public Facebook post where he had denied applying for the position.  Mr Saintfiet was appointed to Malta’s national football team last October. He watched over an embarrassing 3 – 0 defeat against Estonia in his first match, and has only coached the team through two consequent matches, both of which were goalless losses for the Maltese side.

He has coached teams in many countries, including Malawi and Bangladesh.  Since his departure, the Malta National Football Team’s Wikipedia page has been tampered with, and now displays famed Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger as the coach of the Maltese team.

Source: LovinMalta.com

As his fairytale season continues in the English Premier League and the Champions League, talk of Liverpool’s Mo Salah contending for the top prize in European football continues to gain currency. The latest to agree that Salah is getting inching towards Ballon d’Or recognition is Ghana’s skipper, Asamoah Gyan.

Gyan, Ghana’s top scorer in the national team shirt, described Salah as a ‘strong candidate’ for the top award currently held by Portugal and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo. Gyan’s comment was in response to a tweet by top Ghanaian journalist Juliet Bawuah, who had tweeted “Can we start talking about Ballon d’Or? #Salah on a roll this year.”

Her tweet came after Salah’s second goal against his former side AS Roma in the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League game at Anfield. Liverpool hit five goals before Roma pulled two back late in the game. Senegalese skipper Sadio Mane also scored from a Salah assist.

With Gyan’s ‘strong candidate’ tweet response, Juliet quoted his tweet and added ‘Gyan is impressed.’ The Ghanaian skipper also stressed later that Salah will most definitely be part of the top 3 contenders for the Ballon d’Or when next it is awarded.

Gyan also agreed with another tweet that if Salah is able to inspire the national side to excel at the World Cup later this year in Russia, then he surely did deserve the accolade. The last time an African player won the award was back in the nineties when George Weah, then with AC Milan, won the award.

In the past few years, it has been a straight fight between Ronaldo and Barcelona’s Argentine forward Lionel Messi. They have won it for most of the last decade.

Source: Africa News

Former Indomitable Lions coach, Henri Michel has reportedly passed away at the age of 70 following a lengthy bout of illness.

Michel represented France and Nantes during his playing days, earning 58 international caps and competing at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

After hanging up his boots, he coached a number of clubs and national teams, including Les Bleus, Cameroon, Morocco, UAE, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya.

Source: Kickoff.com

Former France coach Raymond Domenech and German World Cup winner Lothar Matthaeus are among more than 70 men to have applied to be coach of African champion Cameroon.

Cameroon is looking for a new coach less than a year before it defends its African Cup of Nations title as tournament host.

Belgium’s Hugo Broos led Cameroon to the 2017 African title in Gabon in February last year but was fired 10 months later after Cameroon failed to qualify for the World Cup in Russia.

Other well-known names to apply are Carlos Queiroz, the former Manchester United assistant coach, and Rigobert Song, the ex-Cameroon captain who has been coaching the national development team.

Cameroon Football Federation spokesman Simon Lyonga confirmed the list of applicants. Others include Tom Saintfiet, Alain Giresse, and Philippe Troussier, all coaches with experience of working in Africa. There were 31 Cameroonians who applied for the job.

Source: The News Tribune

Alex Song wasn’t in training with the New York Red Bulls on Wednesday although he is expected back at some point in the future, this as the club reiterates that he isn’t on trial.

For the last two weeks, Song has been training with the Red Bulls in what the club has said has been an opportunity to let a world class player get his fitness; the midfielder is currently out of contract and seeking a club. The idea of Song joining the Red Bulls, a leap in logic made by many fans, made some sense given his resume.

Song can play as a holding midfielder as well as a center back. The Cameroonian international has played with some prominent clubs around the world, including Arsenal, Barcelona and West Ham United. He will turn 30-years old in September.

“He’s not [in] today,” Marsch said on Wednesday about Song being at training. “He left last week to go be with his family for a little bit. There’s a chance that we do see him again. It’s been great having him here but it’s not a trial — it’s just helping him out.”

www.metro.us

African athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Australia have been in the news for action on and off the track.

The haul of 34 gold medals won by African athletes has been overshadowed by headlines of at least 13 athletes from Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda and Sierra Leone absconding from team camps. It’s a recurring scenario for hosts of minor to major sporting events held in wealthier nations. For Australia, it happened in 2006 when Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games and 2000 when Sydney hosted the Olympics.

The most common reason for this, as with many migrants, is the search for a better life. Even for pro athletes in many African countries, wealthy and more developed countries remain a major draw. Occasionally, athletes make the move to escape political repression back home. The most recent example came at the 2016 Rio Olympics when Feyisa Lilesa, an Ethiopian marathoner, crossed his arms in anti-government protest.

Even though the competition has wrapped up, missing athletes officially have until May 15—when their visas expire—to make plans that allow them to remain in Australia. An obvious option would be to apply for asylum but a successful application will depend on being able to cite valid basis of threat to life in their home countries. Already, a migration agency operating on the Gold Coast says “more than 40 people,” including Commonwealth Games athletes from Africa, have so far come in to discuss potential visa options to allow them remain in Australia.

Another option is to obtain a special skills visa which allows them continue to reside and compete as professional athletes. For example, Ethiopia’s Lilesa was granted special skills visa by the United States after he did not return home given fears of government reprisal after his protest at the Rio Olympics.

The nuclear option would be staying on illegally after the visa expires and, without valid documentation, likely turning to menial jobs to earn money.

For many athletes, applying as part of a team delegation to major sporting events offers a much higher chance of securing visas and traveling safely and for free. Back home, mismanagement, corruption and poor welfare packages as well as sub-par training facilities often means being an athlete is not the most lucrative livelihood. As a result, African athletes, and at times officials, have routinely gone missing at sporting events hosted in more developed nations—21 members of African delegations went missing or claimed asylum after the London Olympics in 2012.

For more talented or high-profile athletes, another option is to switch nationalities and represent countries offering better prospects. It’s a well-exercised option: during the Rio Olympics in 2016, at least 30 Kenyan-born athletes competed for other countries. Indeed, Bahrain’s Olympic track field team was almost entirely made up athletes originally from Africa as half of the men’s team and nearly all of the women’s team hailed from Nigeria, Ethiopia, or Kenya.

Source: Quartz Media

Cameroon’s Chef de Mission is due to fly out of the Gold Coast this morning having heard nothing from his eight missing Commonwealth Games athletes, saying he is exhausted from the scrutiny prompted by their disappearance.

Victor Agbor Nso had to deal with the media fallout after the athletes vanished from the athletes’ village during competition in a series of late night walk-outs. They included weightlifters and boxers. All but one had competed in their individual events before they disappeared.

Ms Nso told the ABC yesterday afternoon he had not heard from his “missing” athletes and wanted to make sure all his other team members had flown home before he headed to the airport.

“As far as I am aware they are still missing,” he said. “I have spoken, I have communicated sufficiently on this and the issue is now in the hands of the Australian Government, especially the Australian police. “I do not want to talk about this any more, I am concentrating on returning home.”

INFOGRAPHIC: The Cameroon athletes missing from the Commonwealth Games Village on Queensland’s Gold Coast. (LtoR, top row to bottom row): Fotsala Simplice, Fokou Arsene, Ndzie Tchoyi Christian, Yombo Ulrich, Ndiang Christelle, Minkoumba Petit David, Fouodji Arcangeline Sonkbou and Matam Matam Olivier Heracles.

Some officials also performed vanishing acts, including Rwanda’s weightlifting coach who said he was off to the toilet ahead of his team’s performance — but never returned.

None are technically in breach of their visas, which do not run out until midnight May 15.

Gold Coast migration consultant Ian Natherson said last week his firm had been inundated with calls from African Games participants looking for ways to legally stay in Australia. “You can’t blame them trying to stay,” he said yesterday.

“Look at the weather here, and the lifestyle. It is a great place to be in. Why would you want to go back? “This has happened with all games. It happened at the Sydney Olympics, and it will happen again if we are lucky enough to get the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.

“It is only when you get here you realise how great this country is and what it has to offer. “Just walking down the street the freedom you have — you cannot do that in alot of African countries. “I come from South Africa myself, where I would not walk the streets after dark.

“But I am sure a lot of them did do that here and just thoroughly enjoyed the freedom. “I always say to people — if you are born in this country you have no idea how good it is until you have come from somewhere else.”

Mr Natherson said a Kenyan paralympian and her husband contacted his firm yesterday inquiring about how they could stay. He said he had fielded more than 40 calls from a range of different nations, but mostly Africans.

Mr Natherson said he did not know if any of the inquiries were from the missing Cameroonian athletes. “No-one has come in with any formal paperwork,” he said. An Australian Border Force official says the missing athletes and officials would be red flagged from May 16, tracked down and deported if they were still in the country.

Meanwhile, a Mauritian team official who left Australia after being charged with sexual assault is due to appear in Southport Magistrates Court this morning.

The 52-year-old, who strenuously denied the allegations, had been expelled from the athletes village and had his Games accreditation cancelled. He had made an undertaking to appear in court, but flew home to Mauritius on April 13.

Source: ABC.Net

A men’s squash pairing from Sierra Leone and a Rwandan para-powerlifting coach are the latest African absentees to go missing from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Hours after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned athletes who breached their visa conditions they’d be tracked down, locked up and deported, Sierra Leone’s Ernest Jombla and Yusif Mansaray did not appear for their men’s doubles match on Thursday morning.

It means Jombla and Mansaray failed to appear for either of their matches on the Gold Coast after skipping Tuesday’s clash with Welsh pair Peter Creed and Joel Makin. Despite the pair not making their matches, Sierra Leone officials insisted both were still at the village and had merely confused the times of their events.

Rwanda’s chef de mission Eugene Nzabanterura said coach Jean Paul Nsengiyuma hadn’t been seen since his athlete’s event finished at the Carrara Sports and Leisure Centre on Tuesday.

“Up to now we don’t know where he is,” Nzabanterura told AAP.

“We’ve declared it to the police and the administration of GOLDOC and we are still searching for him.”

Two Ugandans were reportedly missing but team officials were adamant all of their athletes and officials were accounted for.

The developments came a day after Cameroon revealed eight of its 42-strong Games team are missing, including two boxers who failed to appear for their bouts.

Most athletes and officials are on visas that remain valid until May 15 but Dutton was concerned by instances in which athletes missed their events at the Games “when that was the reason they were here”.

He said they were “taking the mickey”.

“The compliance officers will be out there, I promise, tracking these people down and they’ll be deported as quickly as possible,” he told Macquarie Radio.

“If they don’t want to be held in detention or locked up at the local watch house, they’d better jump on a plane before the 15th and comply with their visas conditions.”

Dutton said if any of the missing athletes claimed protection status, Border Force would test each case.

“These people and others that might have a similar objective need to hear this message very clearly – they aren’t going to game the system,” he said.

Commonwealth Games boss Peter Beattie said while the athletes’ visas allow them to spend time enjoying Australia, they should return to their home country as scheduled.

“We encourage people to get a visa, come here and compete, stay a little while after, spend some money in this country and then go home, and that’s our position,” Beattie told ABC Radio.

Source: World Wide of Sports

Five Cameroonian athletes competing at the Commonwealth Games in Australia have gone missing, the country’s Team Manager, Victor Agbor Nso, said on Tuesday. Nso told Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV that Weightlifter Olivier Matam and boxers Ndzie Tchoyi and Simplice Fotsala were due to compete on Tuesday but could not be found. He added that two other weightlifters — Aka Angeline Filji and Mikoumba Petit David, had earlier gone missing from the games at the Gold Coast, but did not specify when.

He explained that Australian police were informed about the situation. He said “we have officially informed our hierarchy back home: the Ministry of Sports and the president of the National Olympic Committee of Cameroon. “We have also laid formal complaint to the Australian police.” It is not the first time Cameroonian athletes disappeared at major sporting event. In 2012, five male boxers, a female footballer and a male swimmer absconded from the London Olympic village.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com