By Ibrahim Karim Bangura (Tanko)

The former Coach of FC Johansen, Dimitar Pantev, has won the Cameroon ‘Elite One League’ with Victoria United last week, after playing the MTN Elite One Play Offs 2024. The Limbe based team was held on a 2-2 draw with Stade Renard to move to 13 points, the most on the general classification for the season, and were declared champions for the 2023-2024 league season.

Dimitar accomplished this success in just 2 months after taking over the team.

The Bulgarian Coach was FC Johansen’s head coach for the second rounds of the 2022-2023 Sierra Leone Premier League Season.

He came in with lots of experience and determination to elevate FC Johansen at the time.

And tactlessly he did not succeed in what is widely believed to be a ploy against him to ruin the club’s dream by the football officials in the country.

Despite bringing in an experienced coach from abroad and 3 top-flight Ghanaian players, FC Johansen was targeted and eventually relegated to the Division One League.

Also, allegations of corruption, poor officiating and match manipulation are said to have ruined Johansen’s league campaign by then.

Meanwhile, Dimitar’s latest championship has confirmed his professionalism and has further justified him from his ‘supposed awful performance’ with FC Johansen.

Certainly, he is now in the open that the football atmosphere in Sierra Leone is poisonous and uncreative as the football industry is allegedly marred with corruption, poor officiating, match manipulation, violence, and maladministration. This makes it difficult for decent professionals to thrive and excel in the country.

Dimitar Pantev’s alleged case is a clear example of this fact. When he gets to a decent footballing society like Cameroon, he’s able to compete fairly and excel, which was impossible in Sierra Leone. During his time as Head Coach of FC Johansen, match officials awarded 6 penalties against Johansen, 5 of which came in after the 85th minute; 7 genuine goals were disallowed, plus several red cards and non-awarded penalties for Johansen.

In a match against Kamboi Eagles, a Johansen right-back was horribly tackled in the Eagles’ 18-yard box which left his left foot broken.

No penalty was awarded by the referee, nor was the culprit penalized. All of these happened in the last 10 matches of the 2022-2023 league seasons.

However, Coach Dimitar protested against the poor officiating, which resulted in the Premier League Board suspending him for 3 matches. It was all clear that there was an orchestrated mission to see the back of FC Johansen, to the point that top and middle table teams were abandoning matches to unfairly award undeserving ‘3 points and 3 goals’ to teams battling relegation in the final matches in the league.