The Sunday News
Ngqwele Dube, Sports Correspondent
FORMER Ngezi Platinum Stars coach, Erol Akbay reportedly had a disagreement with his close friend, Cosmas “Tsano” Zulu after the Dutchman’s departure from the club while the latter retained his job.
Akbay, who brought in Zulu to the side when he was appointed head coach at the beginning of the season, was fired last Tuesday together with assistant Tendai Chikuni. Zulu was spared and remains the goalkeepers’ coach.
Impeccable sources at Ngezi said Akbay was apparently unhappy that Zulu had retained his job and told him to resign as a sign of loyalty to him but the latter refused leading to a harsh exchange of words.
“The two exchanged harsh words after Akbay asked Tsano (Zulu) to resign in solidarity with him but the goalkeepers coach refused to do that. Tsano said he cannot just leave because Akbay was fired and it seemed an unreasonable request. Akbay was seemingly unhappy at being fired as he felt he had done a good job considering the resources at his disposal,” said the source.
Akbay was however, singing a different tune when asked about the matter, stating that he had no hard feelings about Tsano retaining his post.
“No it’s not like that, I understand its difficult finding a job locally and he has to put bread for his family so I don’t mind if he stays. I have no hard feelings and wish him good luck. Again my contract stated that if I was to get fired, I would go with the assistant coach but for the goalkeepers coach it was different. I am happy if he stays,” he said.
Zulu refused to comment on the issue. Meanwhile, Ngezi have replaced Akbay with Rodwell Dhlakama who joined the team on Friday and travelled with the players to Chegutu to watch their development side in action in the Central Region Division One. Akbay expressed displeasure at his firing saying he had been unfairly treated as the executive failed to meet their side of the bargain.
He said while results were not coming, he had been tasked with winning either the championship or Chibuku Cup and chances of winning the latter are still there.
“I think there were divisions within the executive when they hired me so they always had someone else in their mind so they never made it easy for me to do my job. There are many quality players that were allowed to leave at the beginning of the year but they were not replaced so I do not know how they expected me to achieve the targets they gave me. I even gave them a list of players that I wanted but not even one was acquired. So my question is how did they expect me to meet my target when I don’t have the arsenal I asked for?
“While winning the league was going to be difficult, the Chibuku Cup starts next weekend so I could have won that and fulfilled one of the biggest targets set for me but they just rushed to fire us,” he said, revealing he was still negotiating his exit package.
Akbay replaced Tonderai Ndiraya who was sacked towards the end of last season and the Dutchman leaves the club on eighth position on the log table having won eight games, drew the same number and lost seven.
