Vietnam football club fire Sierra American striker for his indiscipline

Victor Mansaray makes a gesture after scoring for Binh Duong during a V-Leauge game against Hanoi on January 23, 2020 at Hanoi's Hang Day Stadium. Photo by VnExpress/Lam Thoa.

During the V-League 2021 second round match played at the Hang Day Stadium, Mansaray scored the equalizer for Binh Duong in the first half, allowing the club to beat Hanoi 2-1.

But that contribution was not enough to save Mansaray from a terminated contract.

Ever since Becamex Binh Duong introduced Mansaray as an official forward in December last year, he has attracted complaints as a troublemaker with a bad temper who frequently disobeyed coach Phan Thanh Hung.

During a friendly game ahead of V-League 2021 on January 5, Mansaray kicked the ball right at a photojournalist and did not apologize until he was forced to.

After scoring for Binh Duong on Saturday, he turned towards reporters, shouting at them and made a gesture implying that he had silenced them. Right after the game, he said on his social media page that all those who have criticized him should "shut up."

Coach Hung said: "Mansaray is too hasty and has problems with manners.

"He will have to fix himself a lot if he wants to stay and play in Vietnam."

Mansaray used to play for HCMC before moving to Ha Tinh for V-League 2020.

Becamex have decided to replace Mansaray with Ivorian Oussou Konan Anicet, 31.

In a similar move, the Nam Dinh Club based in northern Vietnam have terminated their contract with German midfielder Gramoz Kurtaj after he refused to play in a V-League game against Hai Phong on Saturday.

Gramoz Kurtaj (L) and other players of Nam Dinh cheer after he scored in a V. League game against Hanoi on January 15, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Lam Thoa.

Coach Nguyen Van Sy said Kurtaj claimed he had a slight injury and did not want to play, even after he had been named in the squad.

"Gramoz has no injures at all. He has practiced normally in the past few days and doctors said there is nothing wrong with him.

"The issue here is that he has a superiority complex. He has only scored twice for Nam Dinh and thinks of himself as Ronaldo. We don’t really need such players," an official of the club told VnExpress.

Kurtaj, 30, played for Da Nang in 2017 and Thanh Hoa in 2019. Last year, he returned to Kosovo, his country of origin, for a few months before returning to Vietnam.

In the opening game of V-League 2021 on January 15, he scored two goals, helping Nam Dinh beat Hanoi 3-0.

Because of Covid-19, which delayed Gramoz's entry into Vietnam plus the two-week quarantine on entry, Nam Dinh had reduced his probation period to just one month before enlisting him as an official player.

On his Facebook page, Gramoz explained that "his muscles were tired after being in quarantine for two weeks" and then the game against Hanoi was "intense and I gave 100 percent on the field to win the match."

"I felt that it could become a serious injury if I did not rest for a few days," he wrote.

He also said he had been put under pressure to sign the contract with Nam Dinh.

"I made quarantine for 2 weeks and started to make training with Nam Dinh. On the last day of the registration I had to sign a contract quickly and the club told me that they will sign me for only 1 month. I was put under pressure to sign, or otherwise the club would have signed another player, as there were many more players on test," he said.

As regulated by the Vietnam Professional Football Joint Stock Company, which is responsible for the Vietnam men's, women's, Olympic, and youth teams as well as national competitions, clubs can freely change foreign players for their squad before entering the fourth round of the V-League competition.