It did not even take a day for Patrick De Wilde, who signed a one-year contract on June 5, to question himself whether he could stay for 365 days as the head coach of the Nepali senior women’s team.

De Wilde, the Belgian UEFA pro-license holder, had confronted ANFA officials on Day 1 as soon as he found out that he was staying at a different hotel, while his players were kept in a hostel-like hotel far from him.

“I said let’s all stay in one hotel, they said they could arrange 3-star. I said a minimum 4-star. And their faces already showed: ‘Difficult coach!’,” De Wilde revealed in an exclusive interview with the Post after the team’s final AFC Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers’ match in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

There were several other concerns raised by De Wilde during the interview. But rather than accepting the shortcomings, the ANFA got angry, defended itself, and asked for clarification from the Belgian. In turn, De Wilde sent his resignation from Belgium in early July.

Further, the ANFA never officially disclosed that De Wilde resigned. When the Post inquired why it was not revealed to the fans, an ANFA employee informed that the ANFA administration did not want to make it public.

The ANFA finally made the reveal, though indirectly, on September 25, when Nabin Neupane was appointed the head coach of the women’s team until the 2026 SAFF Women’s Championship.

De Wilde, who wanted to stay for the players who amazed him with their dedication and commitment to improvement, could not make himself stay as the ANFA did not show signs of mending its ways.

It was not the first time that the scenario—where foreign coaches left Nepal due to dissatisfaction with the ANFA administration and management—occurred.

“In Nepal, they said if they remove me, they will do better,” said Sri Lanka’s head coach Abdullah Al Mutairi before the South Asian country defeated Turkmenistan 1-0 on October 9. The former head coach of the Nepali men’s team from April 2021 to September 2022 added, “After [they] remove me, four years, they never win.”

Al Mutairi wanted to stay in Nepal as the fans loved him. The fans were hopeful that the Qatari could make the Gorkhalis a dominant force in South Asian football. However, Al Mutairi, who demanded good changes, was a victim of ANFA’s politics and ego.

Following the resignation of De Wilde and the past experience of foreign coaches leaving Nepal with displeasure, it was only natural to wonder whether Matt Ross, the head coach of the Nepali men’s team, could stay for a year or not.

The answer came on October 30 as the resignation of Ross, the Australian UEFA pro-license holder who had signed a one-year contract on March 2, was revealed. Speaking to Kantipur Daily, the Post’s sister publication, on Thursday, ANFA General Secretary Kiran Rai informed that the resignation from Ross, who was then in Germany, came two days ago through WhatsApp.

If it were not for some ANFA insiders tipping up the media about the resignation, ANFA would have kept it a secret for as long as they could.

As the men’s team are scheduled to travel to Bangladesh for a friendly on November 13—a consolation match after the second friendly between the duo on September 9 was cancelled following the Gen Z revolt—the vacant seat was given to Hari Khadka, a former national player who is currently the technical director at the ANFA.

“…there is a quote that says: the frontline coach looks for victory in the next game, and the technical director looks for victory in the next decade,” FIFA quotes Frank Ludolph, UEFA’s Head of Technical Development, in an article on ‘The responsibilities of the technical director’.

Meanwhile, ANFA’s technical director will be busy on the frontline seeking victory in the upcoming games until the end of Nepal’s AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers’ matches—against Malaysia on November 18 and against Laos on March 31 next year, respectively.

Two great coaches leave

Alongside a couple of journalists, including this scribe, a member of the ANFA administration sat at a round dining table during the dinner of the 2nd Nepal Premier League’s auction on August 9. It was nine days after ANFA’s official inauguration of the FIFA Football for Schools programme at Dasharath Stadium in the presence of the programme’s Manager Antonio Buenano Sanchez, and Alberto Giacomini, a F4S official.

According to the ANFA administration’s member, the F4S officials, unaware of the resignation, were searching for De Wilde upon their arrival. “They wanted to meet De Wilde as he had worked in developing training courses at the highest level,” the officer said. “The F4S officials said they were astonished with Nepal landing such a big fish in the coaching role of the national women’s team. When they learnt of his resignation and the reason, they were left in shock.”

Speaking to the Post in Tashkent during the pre-tournament conference of the Asian Cup Qualifiers in June, Uzbekistan’s head coach Kotryna Kulbyte had said that she was well aware of the difficulties of defeating the team led by De Wilde, who was like a mentor to her at Lithuania’s football federation in 2021.

However, De Wilde, the experienced and well-recognised coach, could not stay in Nepal for long. When the Post had asked the senior women’s team players about their experience with De Wilde, they said they were extremely happy with his way of coaching, training and analysis.

De Wilde, who was Nepal women’s first pro-licensed coach, had an experience of over two decades in coaching at a high level. Ross began coaching in 2007.

According to the ANFA, Ross was selected out of 416 UEFA pro-license holder coaches who had applied for the post. There were, however, only 21 pro-license coaches, including De Wilde, who wanted to lead the Nepali women’s team.

The ANFA accepted Ross and De Wilde not only because of their past track records, but also because they were willing to work at a bare minimum wage.

“We will soon begin the process to appoint a new experienced and pro coach for the women’s team,” ANFA spokesperson Suresh Shah had told the Post earlier when asked about the plan after De Wilde’s departure. The football authority also aims to open applications for the men’s team coach soon.

Nonetheless, with the coaches slamming the ANFA for their incompatibility, there is a high chance that better coaches would not apply for the posts in Nepal to waste their time.