Tom Saintfiet
Tom Saintfiet ( born March 29, 1973 in Mol, Belgium ) is a Belgian, former professional football player and football coach since 1997.
Saintfiet played from 1983 to 1997 as an active player in Belgium, rather he had to end his career at age 24 due to injury. He was at the time the youngest football manager in the history of Belgian football. Since then he has both coaches in Belgian, Finnish and Faroese clubs have been as well as national coach of the U- 17 national team of Qatar. He also served as Technical Director at FC Emmen in the Netherlands and as a consultant to the Kazakh Football Federation. From 2008 until 1 October 2010, he coached the national team of Namibia. From 1 January 2011 to May 2011 he was coach of the Jordanian Nadi Shabab Al- Ordon first division. From June to October 2011, Saintfiet was coach of the Ethiopian national soccer team. From the summer of 2012 Saintfiet was sports director of the national team of Nigeria. There he was responsible among other things for the cooperation between the youth teams U-23 and the national team. In early October 2012, he was introduced as the new coach of Yemen, where he has resigned after a defeat against Malaysia in March 2013.
He has a " UEFA coaching license A- Pro" and studied sports psychology and economics.
His greatest success as a coach was the third place in the U-17 Asian Cup 2004 and qualifying for the U-17 World Cup 2005.
Change to Zimbabwe in 2010
On October 1, Saintfiet confirmed his move as a coach for Zimbabwe national football team and announced as the Namibian national team coach. From October to December 2010, the Belgians working in his new position as head coach before the local immigration authority, however, despite the signed four-year contract with the Zimbabwean Football Association ( ZIFA ) the work permit was denied. Saintfiet returned to Namibia, but the Zimbabwean Football Association did not dissolve his contract on. Now the FIFA dealt with this issue because Saintfiets contract is valid, although it has not received a work permit.