Ex-Gor Mahia official Omondi Aduda has openly blamed club officials for the problems facing their coach Roberto Oliveira Goncalves.
As Goal exclusively reported on Friday, the Brazilian tactician is currently embroiled in a tussle with Caf after it emerged he did not have the required Caf A license to handle the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) champions in Caf Champions League assignments.
The revelation by the African body came as the team prepared to honour their preliminary round first leg fixture against Armee Patriotique Rwandaise FC (APR) of Rwanda on November 28 in Kigali.
Aduda, who worked as a Gor Mahia CEO before the team elected new officials in an exercise held on August 8, has now blamed the same officials for negligence and not being abreast with changes in the world of football.
“Someone at Gor Mahia slept on the job,” Aduda told Goal when asked why Caf had reacted that way. “Caf did not question his [Oliveira] qualifications, do you know that none of the foreign coaches have a Caf A license, and what usually happens is that the licenses they hold must be equalized in tandem with the Caf licensing criteria?
Next Match
“Caf doesn’t have problems with his [Oliveira] certificates, that is not right, even those other foreign coaches that we have had, what you do is you send their papers for equalization so that those certifications they get from their countries are equalized at every given level.
“Caf through club licensing keeps on reviewing every day, so for these, they now insist that the head coaches, particularly those for clubs participating in Champions League and Confederation Cup should have improved to hold an equivalent of Caf A license, which all the coaches, should get because the Caf A license is being conducted in Africa only.
“But if you employ a coach from outside Africa, he must have a Caf B license or an equivalent if it is Uefa pro, for instance, it is better than Caf A but you will pass with it as Caf A, then there is Uefa B like now Oliveira has an A license from Brazil and so what someone should have done is to equate the license with Caf.”
Aduda continued: “Sometimes we always tend to ignore things and the biggest problem is those people masquerading as football administrators and they don’t know the rules and regulations, and they ignore everything, remember the FKF gave a circular that all Premier League and Super League clubs should accredit their coaches, and what Gor Mahia officials did, they slept on the job and did not do that.
“If they did that by even paying Sh100, 000 as requested by FKF, the papers of Oliveira should have been fixed at that time, which someone did not do.
"Now the best that ought to have been done is to take his Caf A license from Brazil, write to the Brazilian federation and ask them one if the license is valid back home, and two what is the equivalence of the license, because on the letter from Caf it is a B license, which is equivalent to a Caf C, and while in Rwanda he did a Caf C course, so that is the actual position.
“And Gor Mahia are now to blame for the whole saga because they have officials who don’t understand football, you have a secretary-general, who doesn’t understand football, you have a former rugby man, who has now been put in as the CEO, sometimes you wonder, and when I was in office and doing all these things people thought we don’t know what we are doing.
“We should have known all these [issues] and fix them, we must keep abreast of the changes that happen, if you are in football you must keep abreast with the changes like now I know there are officials in Gor Mahia if you ask them how many substitutions are allowed per match, and they don’t know and they pretend to lead football.
“There is no way particularly when the team is engaged in Caf, you must be abreast with each and every regulation which Caf always give out periodically, then you cannot get into this kind of messes, because it is not the first time we are hiring a foreign coach.
“He was in Rwanda [coaching Rayon Sports], and he coached the team without trouble, even against us [in Caf competition], and he even reached the quarter-finals with the team, he has also coached in Tunisia with the same papers, if there were changes this time around, it was the honour of the club to ensure that we keep abreast with those changes and act on them.”
Caf has already outlined a possible ban that Gor Mahia are likely to face should they fail to abide by the orders.
