A SOUTH AFRICAN court has handed Uganda’s national football coach Milutin “Micho” Sredojevic a three-year suspended sentence for two charges of sexual assault, prosecutors said today.
The Serbian national returned to the Cranes in July. The offences were committed last year when he was coaching Zambia.
“Earlier this morning, the Port Elizabeth regional court found former Zambian national football team coach, Milutin Sredojevic, …guilty of two counts of sexual assault,” the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said in a statement.
The three-year jail sentence was wholly suspended for five years, on condition he does not commit another sexual offence.
The offence arose from an incident in December 2020 during a regional tournament in the South African city of Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth.
A 39-year-old woman was serving coffee at a stadium and asked Sredojevic if he took sugar in his coffee, he said “no and added that he needed another type of sugar, pointing at her private parts,” said the NPA.
Later in the day when the same woman returned to deliver coffee “Sredojevic touched her in an inappropriate manner”.
The Ugandan Football Federation (Fufa) rehired Sredojevic this year. He quit the post four years ago in a dispute over unpaid wages.
He has signed a three-year contract with Uganda, which take in the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar which started in September.
A statement from Fufa today suggested that he is set to keep his job in spite of the conviction.
“The Uganda Cranes coach Milutin Sredojevic asked Fufa for permission to attend to a private matter in South Africa,” it reads.
“We have this afternoon received information that the private matter has been concluded for now. The coach will come back to resume his duties accordingly.”
Sredojevic has been coaching national teams and clubs in Africa since 2001.
