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Sacked Okumbi denies brawling with Ambani over Wazito team selection


Former Wazito FC Technical Director, Stanley Okumbi, admits he had a public disagreement with coach Fred Ambani over team selection.

But Stanley Okumbi, who doubles up as U-20 national football team coach, has denied fighting Ambani – himself a former Harambee Stars striker.

As Nairobi News reported on Sunday, Okumbi and Ambani were fired by the Kenyan Premier League side on Monday, two days after owner Ricardo Badoer publicly complained over the poor spate of results.

“Our players played like there had spent the whole day at (fast food joint) KFC,” wrote Badoer on Twitter after the team’s 4-2 defeat to Kakamega Homeboyz.

But it is emerging there could be more to these dismissals than meets the eye, considering junior coach Dennis Hamisi survived the axe.

“It is not true that we fought. But there was a disagreement over fielding. Fred wanted (to field) a player who had just recovered from sickness. That was part of the problem,” Okumbi told Kahawa Tungu.

But multiple sources within the team suggest the two officials might have been involved in a physical altercation ahead of the Homeboyz game and were served with a verbal suspension after the game.

Wazito is in 13th position on the 18-team league standings on the league standings.

This is considered an underachieving record by fans and pundits considering Badoer and and club sporting director Solomon Alubala’s investment in the squad at the start of the season.