Considering Trainers Too!

What is however disturbing is the disparity with which actors are perceived and treated. In a country like Cameroon where football is like a religion with nearly the entire sporting public passing for players, referees and even trainers at the same time, some of the field actors who would have been pivotal in the game are sometimes treated with disdain.

Come to think of it, when a team excels, the general feeling is that the players did well and each time it falters, the trainers almost always carry the blame. “He doesn’t know anything,” “his line-up wasn’t good” or “his choice of players is bad,” are some of the blames heaped on coaches each time their teams fail to shine. How professionals who painstakingly revise their notes and strive for perfections; with shortcomings of course, to make a team competitive are increasingly being indicted or neglected is a one million dollar question begging for answers.

The Coronavirus outbreak which halted sports activities in the country like elsewhere, forcing the trainers and their trainees to struggle for survival has just come to compound a sorry situation for local coaches. Some of them even when the competition was at its peak weren’t either sure of their take-home or had take-homes that couldn’t even take them half way home.  

Someone somewhere would argue that the coaches have been battling for survival alongside their players. Granted that the sufferings have been same and efforts to make ends meet peculiar to each actor, there is however a school of thought which holds that coaches have not had deserved concern from football authorities in the country. The fact that local coaches were never programmed to benefit from the over FCFA 800 million FIFA support fund for the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the football milieu last July 2020 leaves some with many questions than answers. Was it deliberate or simply forgotten? Is their importance not perceived by all the same way? Local trainers logically deserve better handling for, a team, we all know, means a coalition of many actors with different but complementary roles.

The near shabby treatment of local coaches at the time of Covid-19 comes after complaints from the tec...