Singida coach Middendorp resigns after 'unexpected meeting' with club's authority

Singida Fountain Gate FC head coach Ernst Middendorp on Tuesday 19 September announced his resignation from the club just two weeks after his appointment, citing disagreement with the team’s top officials a day after their 1-0 win over Egyptian side Future FC in the first leg of the second preliminary round clash of the CAF Confederation Cup.

In a long statement dated 18 September and titled ‘A strange chapter of experience’, the former Kaizer Chiefs coach indicated that the authorities at the Tanzania Premier League club scheduled an urgent meeting on the day after Sunday’s win at the Azam Complex with the entire technical team, expressing their dissatisfaction with the team’s performance without requesting for his point of view nor having any discussion on the matter.

The points raised in the meeting, whose purpose had not been explained prior, included issues surrounding how disappointing the result was - a 1-0 victory without more goals, how the game was not up to standard, and the player selection in the said match.

Following a barren draw in the first half, new signing and former Kenya Police attacker Elvis Rupia gave Middendorp’s side a first leg win on Sunday, but to the German international’s surprise, the ‘unexpected statement by the authority’ pushed him to cutting short his relationship with the club as ‘it was hard to absorb’.

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Among the other concerns raised by the club were that certain players expected to be in the lineup weren’t selected, while other players were selected and shouldn’t have.

There was also a call to include the club’s former Assistant Coach to the technical team and with immediate effect.

“I stayed respectful of the difficulty of dealing with the authority’s requests and opinions, I didn't try to change the authority’s opinions, consequently I opted for leaving the relationship with Singida Fountain Gate FC,” Middendorp wrote at the end. “The flight home to Johannesburg took place within the following 20 hours.”

As per Zambian publication Far Post, a club source indicated that Gadiel Michael, a player who had not played for two seasons and originally a left back, was played as a defensive midfielder, while another player, Morice Chukwu, was benched despite his experience as a defensive midfielder.

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“Middendorp just messed up everything. He got a call from management at half-time regarding his selection,” the anonymous source indicated. “He made changes, and the team was able to score one goal.

“We could have won by a bigger margin if he had done his selection right.”

Singida, which is also home to Kenya’s other duo - in addition to Rupia - of Joash Onyango and Duke Abuya, is set to face off with Azam in the league on Thursday afternoon, before playing the CAF Confederation second leg on the road against Future FC on 1 October.

Middendorp coached Kaizer Chiefs in two stints between 2005-2007 and 2018-2020, but was sacked after failing to deliver the league title.