In less than the span of an entire football season, Tampines Rovers will have gone through five head coaches.
After Gavin Lee left to be part of the FAS national team set-up full time, Akbar Nawas, Noh Rahman, Robert Eziakor, Katsuhito Kinoshi and now William Phang have all taken the helm.
Five head coaches within the course a season which is not even completed.
In addition, BG Tampines Rovers is still facing a Ministry of Manpower probe over employment issues surrounding Kinoshi. The club has already been fined by the FAS for Kinoshi’s being on the field of play without having been registered.
TMSGOAL had posted evidence of Kinoshi instructing his players and in the field of play even though his name was not on the team list.
Not only that, the club then claimed that the coach Kinoshi was volunteering his time ahead of getting a full employment status with the club, even though it sounded ludicrous.
TMSGOAL had been receiving messages from Tampines Rovers fans about how the club had been degenerating into a state of chaos. There have also been allegations of the cliques within the team, with the Japanese players largely alienating themselves from the rest of the team.
Directions are allegedly made by club sporting director Tadanari Lee.
And now, just 12 days after being named and announced as Head Coach, Kinoshi has quit and has left while under a cloud of a probe by SIngapore’s Ministry of Manpower.
Kinoshi is not to blame. It is the leadership under the current chairman Shungo Sakamoto which needs to be taken to task.
A club that has had the likes of legends like Quah Kim Song, Noh Alam Shah, Aleksandar Duric, Nazri Nasir, Malek Awab and Mustafic Fahrudin don its colours has landed into the hands of a chairman who does not seem to bother about the gravity of his actions, while still relying on subsidies from the FAS to run the club.
Make no mistake about it. This is a club in crisis.
And the Tampines Rovers leadership needs to step down.