Things Fall Apart At Heartland

In the wake of the sack of Heartland Football Club coach, Kelechi Emeteole and his assistant, Ben Iroha, some senior players of the Premier League side are spoiled for a showdown with the team’s management, Naijaligue.blogspot.com can reveal.

The players are apparently miffed by the turn of event at the club after Emeteole and Iroha were issued sack letters earlier in the week for failing to guide the team to a top two finish in this season’s campaign.

Influential players in the team, it was learnt, engaged some of the club’s management members in heated discussion accusing them of sabotaging the efforts of the players and coaches.

Our correspondent in Owerri reports that the anger is also triggered by the fact that some of the club’s foreign players and Nigerian-born stars, who bring quality to the side, have been frustrated out of the club.

Players such as Zambia’s Signswonder Chibambo, Uchenna Agba, Aziz Ansah of Ghana, Owusu Addae also of Ghana and Bill Sheriff of Liberia among others have since left the Naze Millionaires citing one complaints or the other.

“The players are angry that the club management has been playing god with the players and coaches. Some of the senior players even took on some of the members of the club’s management team by asking if they know anything about managing a club after they sacked the coach and his assistant.

“Most of the players are angry because they have had a very good relationship with the coach and his assistant only for them to be sacked. Though the season has been unsuccessful for the club, the players feel that the management should own up and accept the blame for their poor administration style.

“The players say that the club has been responsible for letting some of their best team-mates leave them when it was clear that they wanted to stay. They even alleged that the club owes them lots of outstanding money and that is one of the reasons several key players left the club in the middle of this season’s competition,” said an insider at Heartland.

Already news has filtered out of the Naze Millionaires’ camp in Owerri that one of its key players, centre-back Ike Thankgod, has made it clear that he wants to leave the club by handing in a transfer request.

It is believed that Thankgod might not be the only player to demand to leave the club despite the temptation of playing in the group stage of the CAF Champions League next month.