Former DR Congo national team coach Florent Ibenge has revealed that South African gaffer Pitso Mosimane played a crucial role in his coaching career when he was about to stop everything.
Ibenge who is currently at the helm of Sudanese Premier League side Al Hilal said after coaching DR Congo Leopards and their local team he won CHAN 2016 tournament with, decided to stop caoching.
However, Mosimane told him not to stop as he is one of the finest managers Africa has in the past two decades.
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“It kind of became political [my mental issues] because we also had a conflict with Angola, we played against them, Rwanda and Congo Brazzaville, facing these countries had a toll on me, and I needed a break,” Ibenge told iDiski Times.
“Mentally it took a lot because all three teams come with so much pressure to produce results. It demands results.
“Pitso, when he knew that I wanted to stop, he told me, ‘you can’t stop now, you can’t stop now – we don’t have many African coaches, so for the moment you are on the top, you are a leader.
“You can’t stop and I’m telling you, you don’t need to stop’. So we spoke and it was a booster [for my confidence]. So it just made me realise, I wasn’t coaching for myself, I was doing this for coaches all over Africa, all the coaches that aren’t considered for jobs and I thought I’d hate to leave now as one of these leaders coaching in Africa.
“Yes, we are really close, but not just us, we are close with some European coaches too. But we are really close because we feel the same pain. We work so hard and nobody takes us as seriously as we should be taken.
“So we have the same aims, the same problems; recognition. We are still struggling but what we realised, by working together, that united we stand and divided, we fall. But before us, there was Stephan Keshi and Hassan Shehata, now it’s us to give the batons to the younger ones coming into the game… but we still left frustrated because we’re going through the same kind of ill-treatment.
“As you see coaches coming from outside, coming to coach here, in a team like South Africa, you can see the coach of South Africa [Hugo Broos], he will leave here and go to another country in Africa.
“But for us, when you are Congolese, you have to just coach in Congo, if you are Moroccan, you only coach in Morocco, so we need to change this, everything has to change. We have to notice that there’s a racial kind of treatment, when you are black you are treated differently, but we can say that we are on the right path to improving this.”
“You can’t stop and I’m telling you, you don’t need to stop’. So we spoke and it was a booster [for my confidence]. So it just made me realise, I wasn’t coaching for myself, I was doing this for coaches all over Africa, all the coaches that aren’t considered for jobs and I thought I’d hate to leave now as one of these leaders coaching in Africa.”