Namibia Football Association (NFA) president, Robert Shimooshili, has denied rumours that the association is looking to replace the current coach of the senior national football team with a foreign coach.

The Brave Warriors, as the national senior football team is affectionately known, is currently being coached by Collin Benjamin, who signed a five-year contract in July 2022 after the previous coach’s contract ended in 2019.

Bobby Samaria was appointed as the caretaker coach from 2019 until 2022.

An audio clip featuring an unidentified Eastern European voice claiming to have been contacted by the NFA Executive Council for the head coach job, went viral on Thursday.

According to the voice note, the council meeting scheduled for 09 December 2023 will determine whether the individual and his technical team will travel to Windhoek, purportedly to discuss the offer of replacing Benjamin as the head coach of the Brave Warriors.

However, in an interview with Nampa on Thursday, NFA president Shimooshili denied
any knowledge of this and stated that hiring a foreign coach is not necessary when there are capable Namibian coaches available.

‘Please pass on my good luck wishes to the person on the voice clip. However, I want to clarify that we have no plans to replace our current national team coach, so I’m not sure who he spoke to about coaching,’ he said.

Shimooshili stressed that the association’s focus at the moment is on building a strong squad for the upcoming African Nations Cup (Afcon), and that there is no plan to replace the current coach.

Source: Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA)