After walking away from his Hawks’ role, the veteran tactician disclosed that he still has the strength to continue his coaching duties
Claude Le Roy has revealed he still has the energy to coach after quitting his job as the handler of the Togolese national team.
After five years as head coach of the Hawks, the 73-year-old decided to talk a walk after failing to qualify the West African country for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations billed for Cameroon.
As Togo’s head coach, he led the team to nine wins, 12 draws and 14 defeats in all competitions.
Although he confirmed that he has already been contacted with job offers, the Frenchman said he wants to take some time off before thinking about his next step.
“I still have the energy to coach. Since yesterday, I received phone calls so I will think about it,” Le Roy told BBC Sport Africa.
“For now, I will take some time off, release my book next month. But I already have some offers on the table and really serious ones.
“It is always heartbreaking to leave a group, a staff that you value but I had to review and be loyal and I felt that after the failure in the Afcon qualifiers I needed to be honest and leave my seat for someone else for the World Cup qualifiers.”
The former Cameroon, DR Congo and Ghana boss is also hopeful the systems he left behind in Togo continues to develop.
“Togolese football never was really organised now a lot of things are currently developed and going in the right way,” he continued.
“I founded ‘Graines du Togo’ [Seeds of Togo] a project to detect young talents and we had 15,000 kids last year.
“We also started to have a meaningful league with pitches that actually look like football pitches.
“I still think my successors will deserve to be given time and understanding.
“A whole generation left with [Serge] Gakpe, [Alaixys] Romao, [Kossi] Agassa and [Emmanuel] Adebayor and don’t forget this generation didn’t win anything. Togo never reached the semi-finals or final of an Afcon.
“I felt we were close to something but we still lost some games because we didn’t have enough experience.
“My job is about results and when you don’t have results, you should be able to say “Thank you very much” especially since they put in place the best conditions possible.”
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