Mohun Bagan rope in Vicuna as head coach

City football giants Mohun Bagan on Friday announced the appointment of Spanish coach Jose Antonio "Kibu" Vicuna for the upcoming football season, the club said in a statement.

Vicuna joined Mohun Bagan from Wisla Plock, a first division Polish club, taking over from Khalid Jamil who was in charge of the green and maroon brigade until last season.

Mohun Bagan were looking for a foreign coach since some time after finishing fifth last season with 29 points from 20 games.

Shankarlal Chakraborty was at the helm from the start but after a string of poor results, he was replaced by I-League winning coach Jamil.

However, things did not get better for the former champions as they failed to match their arch-rivals East Bengal's second place finish by a distance.

There were many names that were doing the rounds including Moroccan Karim Bencherifa, who had coached them before, Portuguese Paulo Menezes, former Gokulam Kerala head coach Fernando Santiago Valera, Hercules head coach Lluis Planaguma and CD Castellon coach Oscar Cano.

Former Bengaluru FC boss Ashley Westwood was also in the fray, according to reports.

"Vicuna is a UEFA Pro Licence holder and has vast experience in professional coaching," the statement said.

The 47-year-old has won the Polish League and the Polish Cup in 2012-13 as part of Legia Warsaw coaching staff. In 2015-16, he won the Polish Super Cup as part of the Lech Poznan coaching staff.

"We have spoken with Kibu and he is happy and excited about the challenges of coaching in Mohun Bagan," directors of Mohun Bagan FC, Srinjoy Bose and Debashish Dutta, said in a statement.

"Kibu has the ability, knowledge and experience. He promotes young players and has a style and a way of working similar to ours. He has a philosophy of the game that is very much like Mohun Bagan's philosophy and is a hard worker. Also, he is passionate about applying advanced technology to both training and matches."

--IANS

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