An unknown Irishman Johnny McKinstry (in photo)<\/i> has been named coach of Leone Stars by the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) replacing the Swede Lars Olof Mattsson who resigned his post few weeks ago.<\/b><\/p>\n
His appointment came after a meeting between the officials of the SLFA and the Country Sports ministry on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Public Relations Officer of the SLFA Sorie Ibrahim Sesay told sierraleonefootball.com<\/i> that McKinstry will only be in charge of Leone Stars\u2019 remaining 2014 World Cup qualifying matches but will be considered to stay on if he does well.<\/p>\n
His first match in charge will be against Tunisia\u2019s Carthage Eagles in Freetown in June follow by Cape Verde in Praia and Equatorial Guinea at home.<\/p>\n
The Acting Director of Sports in the Sports ministry Alphan Coker said: \u201cWe decided to appoint Coach McKinstry because he has a good CV and he understands Sierra Leone football as he has been in the country for a while now\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: We believe he\u2019s a good choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the Irishman is not an established coach as this will be his first time he\u2019s taking over a national side.<\/p>\n
Coach McKinstry has refused to comment on his new appointment saying that he\u2019s yet to be officially been informed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t comment because I\u2019m yet to be officially informed about my appointment.\u00a0 I\u2019ll give my reaction when I have official discussions with the officials concerned,\u201d Coach McKinstry told sierraleonefootball.com.<\/i><\/p>\n
Coach McKinstry has been in Sierra Leone for over two years now working for the Craig Bellamy Foundation which runs a football academy in the country.<\/p>\n
He holds a UEFA \u2018A\u2019 Coaching Licence and\u00a0 has worked for the Irish FA, English Premier League club Newcastle United FC and the USA Major League Soccer team New York Red Bulls.<\/p>\n
Coach McKinstry will be assisted by former Sierra Leonean internationals John Keister and goal keeper coach Tamba Moses.<\/p>\n
By Mohamed Fajah Barrie in Freetown<\/i><\/p>\n
Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n An unknown Irishman Johnny McKinstry (in photo) has been named coach of Leone Stars by the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) replacing the Swede Lars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":55690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,824],"tags":[8987,14236,7286,1476,4666],"class_list":["post-55689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports","tag-craig-bellamy-foundation","tag-johnny-mckinstry","tag-lars-olof-mattsson","tag-leone-stars","tag-leone-stars-coach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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