'Masquerading AFC Leopards members have threatened coach Trucha and his agent' – Shikanda

AFC Leopards chairman Dan Shikanda has revealed threats towards head coach Tomas Trucha and his agent.

Trucha was appointed to take charge of the team after it had been handled by Anthony Kimani since Casa Mbungo’s resignation in December 2019.

But the chair has revealed there are people close to the club who are not happy with the stability of the team so far and have gone ahead to issue threats directed to the coach and his agent.

“There is a serious issue with the coach,” Shikanda told reporters on Wednesday. “We shall do a press conference on Thursday and from here we will go and organise to get the nitty-gritty.

“It is unfortunate that some people who call themselves our members are trying to destabilise our team. They have seen us doing well and they are surely not happy.

“We have beaten Tusker in the first match and there are no comments on our social media pages had we lost that match, you could have seen a lot of negative comments.

“But we know we have people who masquerade as AFC Leopards members and fans but in the real sense, they are not.”

The chair also confirmed the club will engage the Kenya Police in order to deal with the matters around threats on the coach and his agent.

“They are trying to kill the club and are trying to kill the work that the National Executive Committee has done,” he added.

“We are taking the threats seriously and we shall write a statement with the police. We are handling that because the coach feels he is not safe.

“He is in Kenya to help us and add skills to the team.”

Shikanda further spoke about the issues of salaries and how they hope to bridge the gap between the budgetary demands and the money available from sponsorship.

“We have paid salaries up to September and we have not yet settled for October fully but we are going to settle it in the course of this week,” he concluded.

“Then hopefully, we can finish paying up the November salaries in the next two weeks. So, challenges will always be there as this is a big club.

“Our budget being KSh120 million and we have as sponsorship of about KSh40 million.

“You can see the gap between the budget and the sponsorship so we will always try and handle that but there are people who are outside there who are fuelling what is happening at the club.”

AFC Leopards will face Bidco United on December 6 for their second Premier League encounter.