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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

 

Raddy's Burmese Days

Singapore — Former Singapore football head coach Radojko Avramovic has agreed terms with the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) to take over the seat vacated by South Korean Park Sung Hwa last month.
Sources close to the MFF told TODAY that the 64-year-old Serb will start work on Feb 1.
Some 40 coaches had applied for the job, which became vacant following Park’s sacking in December when Myanmar failed to make the semi-finals of the South-east Asian (SEA) Games football competition.
Tasked with winning the gold medal, Myanmar lost their final group match 1-0 to Indonesia and were edged out on the “head-to-head” rule, which Park claimed he was unaware of.
Reportedly paid between US$50,000 (S$ 63,950) and $60,000 per month, 58-year-old Park was just two weeks away from the end of his two-year contract, during which he took charge of Myanmar’s senior and under-23 teams.
PN Sivaji, former Singapore and Home United head coach, thinks Avramovic has the experience and tactical nous to help Myanmar football.
“Raddy will have to be patient when coaching the Myanmar national players who are extremely passionate but may lack the fundamentals which were not taught properly when they were younger,” said Sivaji, whose coaching contract with Myanmar league side KBZ FC ended recently.
During his decade-long tenure as head coach for the Lions, Avramovic burnished his reputation the most successful Singapore football coach by guiding the team to three ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) titles (2004, 2007 and 2012).
He also took Singapore to the brink of qualifying for the 2011 Asian Cup finals, and the team made the third round of qualifiers for the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cup.
It was after winning the third AFF title that Avramovic announced his decision to step down, although news floated about in early 2013 of the possibility that he could stay on with the Football Association of Singapore in a technical director role.
With family in Singapore — his only son, Ivan, works for a local bank and has children here — Avramovic is understood to favour taking up an assignment within the region, and has been linked to vacancies in Malaysia and the Philippines.
Avramovic’s first major assignment will be the Asian Football Confederation Challenge Cup in Maldives (May 19-30), where the winners will go to the 2015 AFC Asian Cup in Australia.

UPDATE - Myanmar admit interest in Avramovic but deny he has been appointed. Story in Goal

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