Former Accra Hearts of Oak coach, Ibrahim Shaibu Tanko, has revealed, he left the Ghanaian giants in 2012 to salvage his integrity as a competent coach.
According to the President of the Ghana Universities Sports Association (GUSA), Hearts of Oak brought in another local coach that he felt was not at his level in terms of coaching, hence, his decision to leave the club to pursue another challenge elsewhere.
Ibrahim Tanko joined the Phobians in 2010 and worked as an assistant to Serbian coach Nebobjsa Vucicevic who was appointed in 2011.
Accra Hearts of Oak ended the painful reign of Nebobjsa Vucicevic in 2012 in an attempt to resurrect their failing league ambitions. Tanko was then asked to play an interim coaching role in the team until the appointment of a substantive one but he would later opt to leave the club in search of another task.
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Speaking in an exclusive interview with Cape Coast based ATL 100.5 FM, the current coach of lower tier side, Real Tamale United (RTU) explaining what led to his exit at Accra Hearts of Oak in 2012 said his integrity was at stake.
“It was about my integrity because, they had brought in a coach for me to assist where I thought at that point in time, I was ahead of the coach, so on principle, I resigned”, he said.
Coach Ibrahim Tanko will go on to have stints with Medeama SC a year after leaving Hearts of Oak. He joined Amidaus Professionals in 2013 to replace Baba Ali but left just four months into his contract for personal reasons.
The experienced football coach, who is the director of sports at the University of Development Studies waded into the conversation surrounding salary cut in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Ghana Premier League Clubs, following the suspension of the league have been plunged into a state of financial distress, hence the discussion of wage cut surfaced as clubs wanted to ease the financial burden.
Shaibu Tanko vehemently kicked against the suggestion stating that most of the players in Ghana don’t earn much to even initiate the salary cut conversation.
“No no, in fact already, how much is the salary of these players?” he quizzed
“The amount given to these players is just something small to keep them going, it can’t even be called salary because some clubs don’t even pay their players $100 and on top of that you want to cut it,” he explained.
He added, “They are just striving to survive with whatever is given them so if you want to slash it, you can imagine where they are going to be.”
Coach Tanko however acknowledged the financial implication of the current situation revealing, RTU had not paid its players for the past two months.
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