Stange declines resignation, will keep on with experiments
The Belarus squad led by a new foreign coach on Wednesday lost for the fourth time in a row in a friendly match against Israel. Despite a bad performance, Bernd Stange is not going to resign. The Belarus Football Federation has no intention to terminate a contract with the German either, Syarhey Novysh, BFF spokesman told the European Radio for Belarus. He said that the main task the German manager is facing is to qualify for the Word Cup’2010 final round. Novysh also said that Stange will continue experimenting up to the World Cup qualifiers, including the next two matches of Euro’2008 qualifying stage.
“There are two more matches (Albania and the Netherlands) ahead of us. After the failure against Luxembourg, Stange asked us to wait and give him some more time for his experiments so that he can check around 40 new candidates for the national squad and come up with a new strategy and a new team,” Novysh said.
The list of candidates has not been revealed. However, it is confirmed that Stange will not disturb the junior team which traditionally supplies players for the main squad. At the same time, he has expressed interest in some of the juniors.
“Belarus’s junior squad is presently at the top of their group. In my opinion, it would not be right to pull key players out of the team, thus endangering their further performance. The main coach shares this understanding. Stange is very interested in some of junior players, but their time will come,” Novysh said.
Stange’s predecessor Yury Puntus keeps neutral and declines comments on the situation. At the same time, he is confident that MTZ-RIPO that he is now coaching can provide decent candidates for the main team.
Stange’s experiments were also noticed abroad, with Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin saying that he doesn’t want to repeat the “deed” of the German and inject a lot of youngsters into his team. Blokhin said that the country’s prestige and his team’s rating was a priority.
Photo: www.eurosport.ru
