Former Côte d’Ivoire and Arsenal defender Kolo Toure have been appointed new manager of English Championship side Wigan Athletic on a three-and-a-half year deal.
Wigan announced Toure’s appointment in a statement released on their website on Tuesday.
Toure who had been working as first-team coach at Leicester since February 2019, held talks with Wigan earlier this month and has now completed his move to the DW Stadium.
The 2015 Africa Cup of Nations winner has no previous management experience.
Toure will be joined by Kevin Betsy and Ashvir Johal at Wigan, while Rob Kelly will be his assistant.
The 41-year-old will now travel to Turkey to join his new players, where they are undergoing a mid-season training camp before resuming their Championship campaign at Millwall on Saturday December 10.
Wigan had been searching for a new boss since sacking Leam Richardson on November 10, just a fortnight after they handed him a new three-year deal, following an eight-game winless run.
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After selecting Toure as his successor, Wigan chief executive Malachy Brannigan said: “We are delighted that Kolo has become the new manager of Wigan Athletic and the board are pleased that he is the man to take us forward.
“We received a high calibre of applicants for the manager’s job in recent weeks in a very thorough recruitment process as we looked to appoint the right person for the role.
“From the earliest of conversations we had with Kolo it was evident to us that he had instantly bought into the values of the club, with his enthusiasm, knowledge and immense desire to work and be part of Wigan Athletic shining throughout the process.
“There is no doubt that this appointment is an exciting one for the football club. Kolo is a manager who wants to play a positive brand of football and will strive every day to make the club stronger.
“The work starts immediately with the first-team squad as the season is just a couple of weeks away from restarting.
“As a board of directors, we look forward to working closely with Kolo and his team as the work begins collectively to establish Wigan Athletic as a Championship club.
“I am sure that all Latics supporters will get behind the appointment of Kolo Toure, give their backing to the staff and the players, as the football club begins a new, exciting era.”
Wigan are currently third-from-bottom in the Championship but are only inside the relegation zone on goal difference.
15 Comments
This is a WAKE UP CALL for all our EX INTERNATIONALS to go out there and SOURCE for JOB!
The SE COACHING JOB is not their BIRTH RIGHT!!
This is what we try and tell Nigerians. Yaya Toure is very likely to become the Ivory Coast coach in the future, and even after an illustrious football career he was prepared to take coaching jobs in Ukraine and Russia to gain experience as well as assistant coaching jobs for Ivory Coast and Tottenham.
He has now been rewarded with the Wigan Athletic job.
Instead, Nigerian coaches want the SE jobs without international exposure and experience based on their NPFL semi-professional league experience.
I keep mistaking the brothers. Kolo was the U-23 coach for Ivory Coast, assistant coach at Celtic, and first-team coach at Leicester before his Wigan appointment.
Nice one Toure..
He took his time to get to this job..
Our ex-players will be hanging around the corridor of power to be given the GE/FE/SE coach just because they are Siaone, Amotaxi,Eguzero, Yoyo..
Some of them have become players agent interfering in players selection for national duty..
The ones that have taken their coaching career to similar level will not be considered for SE Jon, because the thieves in nff won’t get their share..
At this Wcup, All Adrican teams are led by local coaches and they have not do e badly..
Mcorroco is lead by Walid, Senegal has Cisse,Cameroon has song, Ghana has Etoo, Tunisia is led by Jalel,
These coaches are respected by their FA’s as they are all getting paid really good money as at when due..
The last set of SE local coaches were frustrated by Picnic.
In recent years, Oliseh and Egbo have done creditably well in European Leagues but the nff prefers Pesseiro. So far, Pesseiro has really under-performed.
If the nff can’t hire a young and ambitious coach with European experience, they should look inward.
Where are our own lazy, entitled exinternationals. Failures who have never achieved anything in coaching but want to use Amodu and Keshi as foils to get SE coaching jobs.
Where are Dosu, Okparaku, Akpoborie and all those CSN gossips
Ndi nobody wants to give us jobs because we are blacks. Lazy shameless people.
Last where is Joseph Yobo and his 100caps Is enough to coach the national team psychopaths…?
You all should come and see how your mates are growing their coaching careers and not sitting at FA gates like beggers waiting for jobs to be thrown at them.
To think some useless folks on this forum where insulting me for giving their lazy ex-tingods the same tips the likes of Toure has just used makes me fell accomplished.
By the way, the younger toure (Yaya) is also currently head coach at Tottenham U16s (or U18s)
Nigerian exinternationals would rather want to start their coaching careers with the SE job…..even then ones that have not had a combined gestation of 2 years as football coaches.
100 caps is enough indeed….LMAOoo
Congrats Kolo Toure. The reward for hardwork and humility.
May the ancestors of the black race guide you in your new endeavor.
Lolz you just reminded me of something.
Where is segun Odegbami? He should tell us where his 100 caped Yobo is coaching right now. The man he connive to forced on Rohr just to frustrate the good coach.
They can’t acquire more certificates bcs their heads are blocked. Bunch of miserable block heads. They’d fail final exams, hence, they deem it unimportant to acquire certificates or upgrade themselves. All they know Is fight to get 100 caps, be a lap dog of one of the nff scribes or sabotage fellow colleagues to get their jobs through the back door. Shameless idiots. This country just needs to be doused with fuel and set on fire, let pinick, odegbami, dare, and co burn to ashes.
You spoke my mind…. Those lazy ass-holes including Daniel Amotaxi and Oogun Efon need to go find a job. Super Eagles is not a rehab center. Playing for Super Eagles in the past does not give you the entitlement or make you automatic choice to coach any of the national teams. You have to work for it by improving yourself and also prove that you can do the job. You finish your career, you start lazying around, you get sick and you start looking for whom to pay your medical bills. The time you have after your career, you wasted lobbying to be appointed as a coach even when you have not proven to be good enough to coach a team.
You spoke my mind…. Those lazy ass-holes including Daniel Amotaxi and Oogun Efon need to go find a job. Super Eagles is not a rehab center. Playing for Super Eagles in the past does not give you the entitlement or make you automatic choice to coach any of the national teams. You have to work for it by improving yourself and also prove that you can do the job. You finish your career, you start lazying around, you get sick and you start looking for whom to pay your medical bills. The time you have after your career, you wasted lobbying to be appointed as a coach even when you have not proven to be good enough to coach a team.
sorry, the country is more than the equivalent of half of the African countries merge into one by the British empire, but they did say we could be separated after the but is hard to leave now by all this corrupt government because what they stealing they don’t want Nigeria to be separated.
This Toure must be a white man….
Hahahaha….indeed, he is a white man. Cant you see the colour of his skin. That is why his coaching career has been making a steady upwards pprogress in the same Europe where our own exinternationals sit their lazy asses down in their parlours and expect jobs to be thrown at them because they played at 7 world cups…..LMAOoo
When will our ex get to this point in their coaching career?
This young man ended his career as a player few years back and went into coaching…. Look at where he is now.
When will good thing also come to Nigeria?
Is it a crime if we’ve an ex coaching one of the English or Spanish or Italian club?
When getting a coaching job is as easy as going to prostrate before someone at the NFF secretariat and bribing some lazy exinternationals like you to say/write nice and fictitiously audacious
things abouts you on CSN (like propping you to lead the SE to the world cup when you’ve never led a team to even a novelty match), why will they work hard and strive to achieve something tangible on their own…?
What is all this fuss about ex-players taking a coaching job. Is it by force. Abi did anyone of them demanded to coach the National team. And how do you know if they are not even taking classes to be coaches. Na birth right. What of the online coaches here why don’t you go get yours. We no dey even hear of ugbo again, after all the hype. Shouldn’t he be considered for Chelsea’s job by now since he has UEFA pro license. Even Mosimane doesn’t have a UEFA Pro license and yet he is still delivering