Pfister not looking to quit Togo yet
Two weeks in and the World Cup has had its fair share of drama and upsets – but few can have had as memorable a tournament as Togo coach Otto Pfister.
His run leading the Togolese Cup debut has been dotted with player strikes, threats of match boycotts, verbal abuse as well as his own surprise resignation and equally dramatic return just hours before the team’s first group match against South Korea.
Despite all this, Pfister says he isn’t ready to quit just yet, and may well stay on with Togo.
“I can’t tell you,” the 68-year-old German said when asked about his future plans ahead of Friday’s final Group G match against France.
“As a trainer you don’t know today what will happen tomorrow. I haven’t considered it yet.”
He said he would make his decision after completing his tournament report and considering “other kinds of information.”
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“As a trainer you don’t know today what will happen tomorrow. I haven’t considered it yet” Otto Pfister, |
After two straight defeats by South Korea and Switzerland, Togo’s ticket home has already been booked.
But Pfister said he had many good memories to take away from Germany 2006.
“There are critical and good moments,” he said. “I will remember the good moments, especially the good moments with the team.”
Perhaps the most critical moment was a threated player strike over bonuses – finally paid this week after intervention by FIFA.
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Togo’s World Cup debut has had |
That prompted Pfister to quit just three days before Togo’s first match against South Korea, only to return just hours before kickoff.
“I just wanted to provoke a reaction with the federation officials so that they finally woke up,” Pfister told journalists in his final press conference in Wangen, the southern German spa town which was home to Togo for five weeks.
“But then I came back because I couldn’t leave the team in limbo.”
Even so, When he did come back, he was denounced by Komlan Assogbavi, the secretary-general of the Togolese football federation, as a traitor and a drunkard.
Pfister says he doesn’t drink alcohol, and is considering legal action against Assogbavi.
“I have experienced similar situations quite often. For me it’s nothing special,” he said.
“Maybe for people who live in Europe it’s something exceptional but I worked in Saudi Arabia and Ghana and all over the world. I have learned to live with it. It’s not a problem.”