After he was reappointed as coach of Leone Stars for the second time on a three years deal, John Keister has stated that for him transition is going to be his main mandate despite he will be tasked to qualify the team for the next Nations Cup in Cameroon.
Sierra Leone are already out of the 2022 World Cup race so Keister’s center of attention will now be on the qualifying matches for the next Nations Cup in Cameroon.
The 49-year-old said he was there the first time he started a job that wasn’t possibly quite finish.
“Transition is going to be my mandate, that’s what we are going to focus on despite my task is to qualify the team for the next Nations Cup in Cameroon, he said.
“I know Sierra Leone hasn’t qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations since 1996 and if it doesn’t happen in 2022 in Cameroon, then we look forward to 2023. The former midfielder, who was capped 16 times by Sierra Leone, continued; “I think it’ll be the appropriate time for us to achieve what we want in terms of our transition”.
He added: “we have a national team that is obviously ageing; we need to get in a fresh group of players, I’m going to get rid of everyone in the last national team, but we need to fresh up things a little bit more compare to the last time I was in charge. Building a new national team is part of a massive transition that Sierra Leone is going through.”
Keister is expected to relinquish his current coaching job with the 2019 Sierra Leone Premier League champion, East End Lions, whom he won the title with an unbeaten.
East End Lions Management Team Congratulated Coach Kiester on his new national assignment and extends its thanks to the SLFA and all those who critically looked closely at competing choices and settled for our Kiester, without whom there is hardly any.