At the conclusion of AFCON 2023, I wrote in this Column that the ‘Super Eagles was now in a good place. I said so because the team never lost any match throughout the tournament except the final in which the hosts Ivory Coast defeated the Super Eagles by two goals to one.
•Ibrahim Gusau, NFF Chairman
Three of our players were named in the tournament’s first eleven. The Super Eagles Captain at the tournament William Troost Ekong was named the most valuable player of the tournament. Before AFCON 2023 the Super Eagles occupied the 43” position in the world FIFA ranking. After the tournament the team jumped several steps to the 28” position in the world. This is good but not as good as we were in 1995 after our performance in the 1994 AFCON that we won with Clemens Westethof as the coach. We were solidly stationed at the number five position in the world. Since then we have not got anywhere near there. But our relative success at the 2023 AFCON ought to inspire us to seek to do better in both AFCON and the world cup. We have the players but we need a good support base, a great technical back-up and an accomplished and talented coach. That is the point at which we are now.
The coach who guided the team during the last AFCON Jose Peseiro had left because his 22months tenure had ended and it was not renewed. The reason for non-renewal, I learn, is that his salary of $50,000 per month was a huge burden for the football authorities to carry. Football is the world’s premier sport. It is a cash cow. But it is also a money guzzler so good coaches don’t come cheap.
Nigeria should have found the money with which to keep the coach because we have a few qualifying matches for the 2026 world cup to be played soon. However, there is no need crying over spilt milk. The NFF has now advertised the position and a number of applicants, foreign and local, have shown interest. These applicants include Emmanuel Amuneke, a former Barcelona winger who was a gold winning member of the 1994 AFCON and the 1996 Olympic
Games. He also led the Golden Eaglets to glory at the 2015 FIFA under-17 world cup. He also helped Tanzania to qualify for the 2019 AFCON for the first time since 1980. He is highly rated. Others include Michael Nsien, the current United States under 19 coach, a former Super Eagles Assistant coach Sylvanus Okpala, a former Super Eagles player and Assistant coach, Daniel Amokachi known in his Playing days as the Bull. There is also Finidi George, a former Super Eagles player who guided Enyinmba Football Club to the league title last year. He was also Peseiro’s Assistant at the AFCON 2023. In that group you will also find Sunday Oliseh, a former Super Eagles player and coach. He wants a second chance. There is also a Spain-based former Super Eagles forward Henry Makinwa. He played football for 17 clubs in 11 countries and three continents. Someone else who has thrown his hat into the pitch is Ndubuisi Egbo, a former Tirana Fc handler, who is the first Nigerian coach to win a league title in Europe. This was in Albania in the 2019/2020 season. An experienced Portuguese coach, Antonio Conceicio who guided the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon to a third place finish at the 2021 AFON is also an interested party. He has also coached national teams in Cyprus, Portugal and Saudi Arabia.
There is a debate going on now as to whether we should choose a foreigner or a Nigerian as our coach. For me, that debate is sterile. What we need is a good coach, period, one that can deliver the goods, the goals and the goal of football success.
In 1980, we had a Brazilian coach Otto Gloria who won AFCON for Nigeria. In 1994, we had a Dutchman Clemens Westerhof who won AFCON for us. We have had other foreigners such as Gernot Rohr and Peseiro who won nothing for us. We have also had a Nigerian, Stephen Keshi, who brought the AFCON crown to us in 2013, the only Nigerian to do so. There have been other Nigerian coaches who never achieved the feat. In other parts of Africa, some local coaches have performed the magic. For example, Hassan Sheheta of Egypt won AFCON on three consecutive occasions for Egypt from 2006 to 2010. Also, Alion Cisse of Senegal won AFCON two years ago.
During the 2023 AFCON the Ivorian football authorities dismissed its foreign coach and got an Ivorian to step in. it is the Ivorian indigenous coach that won AFCON 2023 for Ivory Coast. From the above analysis it is dear that some foreigners have succeeded and some Nigerians have also succeeded. Some Nigerians have failed and some foreigners have failed in the coaching of our footballers. So what is needed is not nationality but quality of the coach.
There are charges against both foreign and local coaches. You can call them demerits. For example, foreign coaches are said to ask for very high salaries in dollars; they are not willing to live in Nigeria; they prefer to live abroad because they claim that they have to monitor the performance of Nigerian players there; they are not interested in using players from the domestic league, they prefer ready-made Nigerian players plying their trade abroad; they do not accept dictation on player selection from the NFF or its organs; they exhibit superiority complex.
There are also charges against indigenous coaches. They are said to be easily manipulable by the football managers and they easily cave in and do the wrong thing for fear of losing their job. They are also accused of favouring some players because of ethnicity, religion, money or connection. Critics claim that they lack confidence in disciplining the Players, especially the big boys among them. This is evidence of inferiority complex. The critics of these two sets of coaches believe that these are factors that ought to be taken into serious consideration during the hiring process. All of the allegations may not be true and all of them may not necessarily apply to all coaches in each of the two groups. Most of the charges may actually sound like generalization, unfounded generalization that can be used to derail some of them who belong to any of the two groups. That is why it is more important to go for merit, for meritocracy than to search for hidden demerits, hidden booby traps.
In the advertisement for the job the NFF states that the prospective coach “must have proven experience at the elite level of football” that is vague. That is opague. That is wooly. What they should be looking for is ACHIEVEMENTS, not experience. How many gold medals or trophies has he got as a coach at the elite level of football? How many teams has he taken from the ground floor to the victory podium? Those are the evidence of achievements. No ‘one needs experience that produces no significant achievements. The Super Eagles is a big team full of stars who play in big clubs in Europe and they are likely to respect a coach with significant achievements. They are also likely to look down on a coach that has no such significant achievements, a coach that can be classified as a “mumu”, That is what can breed tension and disunity and failure in a team. The Super Eagles is in a good place now as I have said. The team must be built to be bigger, stronger, more fluent than it is now. Only a coach with significant achievements can take the team to the sky. That depends on the choices that the NFF makes. It should look for money, go and break a bank and get the money to run football, the game that most Nigerians are crazy about if they themselves are also crazy about football.
We have some world cup qualifiers that we have to play against South Africa and Benin Republic in the next few months. We are also supposed to play two international friendlies during the FIFA window this month. So the NFF officials have their hands full. They must speed up the search for a coach of significance, one that suits a team like the Super Eagles. They must employ one early so that he can handle the world cup qualifiers in which we haven’t done very well so far. We have to seek to recover our losses so that we can brighten our chances for appearing at the 2026 world cup.