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Trucha has been in charge of Leopards for two games, with his second game being the club’s first win of the season.
AFC Leopards chairman Dan Shikanda has revealed why the club resorted to bringing back Tomas Trucha to the club after parting ways with Tom Juma following a series of unpleasant results under his tutelage.
Trucha returned to the club for the first time since 2020 when he left after a month citing threats by fans who claimed to be part of the club’s management and has so far overseen two games against Bandari and Nzoia Sugar.
His charges lost 1-0 to the Dockers who are being handled by former striker John Baraza, but they bounced back with a win over Nzoia Sugar away at the Sudi Stadium.
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Shikanda has admitted that the Tom Juma project failed to work as the club bowed down to the pressure by the fans who were far from pleased with his management of the side.
“We started with Tom Juma, of course a lot of expectations from all of us,” Shikanda told Sport On.
“You know football is teamwork, management of football is teamwork. Why we settled on Tom Juma was because he had been deputising at least four European coaches and we knew it would be a case of him continuing seamlessly if we took him in.
“But of course, the pressure has been too much on him given the preparation we had. Of course there was too much pressure on him.”
Shikanda has revealed that re-appointing Tomas Trucha was down to the fact his coaching qualifications were stellar, something he claims enabled them to beat Gor Mahia last season due to the high “technical acumen” possessed by former coach Patrick Aussems.
“Why we reverted back to Trucha Thomas, remember after the exit of Tom Juma, we did not have time to start gambling and it was obvious.
“You remember the myth that -it is not a myth per say - that we had not beaten Gor Mahia for seven years and I can tell you for free that the difference between us and Gor Mahia was not even players.
“It was just the technical acumen than Gor Mahia enjoyed over us, they had a UEFA pro (licensed) coach, a UEFA A coach, while we struggled with CAF A, B, C - I mean, that gap was actually telling.
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“If you watched us play Gor Mahia last season in the game we beat them, we completely outplayed them using a youth-driven team and that was all about technical acumen which Aussems had over his opposing number.”
The chairman has admitted that Trucha’s clear identity in the one month he had been in charge encouraged the management to re-appoint him in efforts to make the club have a clear way of playing football.
“When we had a lot of pressure with preparing the team, we decided to get somebody who had been here, who we knew.
“Of course we had a lot of coaches in mind but we settled on Trucha because he can pick off where he left. When he came in, he had some philosophy and we are looking forward to moving on with that.”
Leopards sit perilously in the relegation places, having collected four points from eight games of football this season.
They will be hoping that they can carry on their momentum after beating Nzoia Sugar at the weekend.
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