Despite their history of regularly changing coaches, board chairman of Accra Hearts of Oak, Togbe Afede XIV, has refuted claims that coaches were sacked at will by the club.

According to him although they have had the course to part ways with some of their former coaches, the decision to terminate their contracts did not come that easy.

Reacting to a question over the consistent change of coaches by the club, the majority shareholder of Hearts said apart of Coach Frank Nuttall who had issues with the board, all the other coaches who left did so on mutual grounds.

For instance, he explained that Japanese-American trainer, Kenichi Yatsuhashi, had to leave because he proposed to go on a study leave in the middle of the league which the board was unwilling to accept which led to Kenichi terminating his contract.

“Kenichi in the middle of the league approached management for a study leave to go and pursue a course of study that will last for several weeks.

“Right in the middle of the league with many matches ahead of us Kenichi decided he had to travel to study and insisted that either he left to study and come back or he was resigning.

“We were left with no option because a club like Accra Hearts of Oak could not have allowed its coach to go away to study, it’s never happened anywhere. So, he was quite rebellious, there was not much we could do so he left”, the board chairman noted.

He described Papic’s behaviour as exceptional and wish the club would never experience anything like that again.

“Papic after a strain of poor results decided he did not have the solutions for tuning around the fortunes of the club. He had talked about player rebellion against him, division among players, allegation of him being unfair to some players.
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“Those were the things that fascinated him. We tried to persuade him to stay but he thought that the situation was irredeemable but again the facts have been ignored”

“It is true that Coach Nutall had issues with the board for his dealings with some of our players”.