Nigerian football is struggling to cope with the rapid changes in the world of sports administration. An attempt last week by the Amaju Pinnick-led Nigerian Football Federation board to fill the vacant post of Super Eagles’ technical adviser ended in a fiasco. Frenchman Paul le Guen rejected the job in controversial circumstances a day after the federation publicly put his name forward. Now, the NFF board is in the market again for a coach, still divided on whether to recruit a foreign or local gaffer. With a major assignment looming on the horizon, the NFF should end the uncertainty quickly by making an astute choice.
The mandate of the NFF is to administer football efficiently in the country, but the failure to appoint a substantive Eagles coach since Sunday Oliseh resigned abruptly from the job last February borders on absurdity, inefficiency and cluelessness. It is hurting the Eagles badly. During the extended interim period that Samson Siasia and Salisu Yusuf were put in temporary charge, Nigeria have failed to qualify for the 2017 African Nations Cup, the first time the Eagles would miss out of two consecutive African Nations Cup finals through the qualifying competition.
The three-time African champions have reached their nadir. In July, the Eagles crashed to No. 70 in the FIFA monthly rankings. At inception of the rankings in 1993, the team emerged 18th, falling only briefly to 71st in 1997 and 76th in 1999. This latest downward trend is abnormal, however.
It’s ominous that with the 2018 World Cup qualifiers only two months away, the Eagles have no substantive coach who can plan seriously ahead. By a quirk of fate, the Eagles are in a difficult group – a dysphemism for the so-called Group of Death – along with Cameroon, Algeria and Zambia. This is not how to approach a tough assignment, knowing that our opponents are pulling out all the stops to secure the sole ticket in the group.
But the real concern is the fixation on hiring a foreign coach when the Nigerian economy is in recession. By extension, the NFF too, is part of the quagmire. Coaches from overseas are not cheap. They command millions of dollars in annual salary. Sam Allardyce, who was appointed by the English Football Association on Friday, will be on a salary of £3.5 million per annum, just like his predecessor, Roy Hodgson. Can Nigerian football really afford the bill of hiring a truly competent foreign coach? How can an NFF that owed the likes of Augustine Eguavoen and the late Shuaibu Amodu, who quit the post a while ago, insist on hiring foreign coaches? The embarrassment Nigeria endured when it could not pay foreign coaches in the past is a lesson not yet imbibed.
It is important to recognise the factors that make our relationships with foreign coaches to end in a bitter divorce. Apart from not meeting documented financial obligations, Nigerian football lacks an enduring structure for coaches – both domestic and foreign – to work with. Lars Lagerbäck (2010) couldn’t succeed in Nigeria because of our poor structure, but the Swede, in partnership with Heimir Hallgrímsson, took Iceland – a nation of 330,000 – to the quarterfinals of the 2016 European Championships in France last month. The same haphazard structure affected Thijs Libregts, Bora Milutinovic, Phillippe Troussier and Berti Vogts. The NFF should address these glaring fundamentals and stop looking for a short-cut to success.
To move forward, every football body undertakes reforms. The NFF must, therefore, reform itself transparently. Even as a leading nation, England understands the need to reform its football association. The British Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch, warned on Sunday that the FA could lose the £40 million of public funding annually if it failed to reform. She said, “… we’ve made it clear that all sports governing bodies have to reform their governance codes. The FA is not excluded from that, and if they don’t, they won’t get public funding. It’s as simple as that.”
Pinnick’s tenure will end in unmitigated disaster if the NFF cannot quickly appoint a coach to deliver the 2018 World Cup ticket. He should stop giving excuses because other countries are appointing coaches, tying their contracts to major tournaments. By July 22, England had appointed Allardyce in replacement of Hodgson, who resigned on June 28. A day earlier, Spain named Julen Lopetegui, as manager. Belgium, that parted company with Marc Wilmots after the Euros, has advertised online for a new coach, giving a deadline of July 31.
The NFF should stop toying with Nigeria’s chances of playing in Russia. A coach should be in place right away to avoid the mad rush that has characterised our football administration. The late Amodu qualified the Eagles for the World Cup in 2002, while the late Stephen Keshi coached them to a Nations Cup win in 2013, and took them to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. There is nothing wrong in hiring a foreign coach if a country can foot the bill; but there is also no reason why a Nigerian cannot do the job. It is only a matter of creating the right atmosphere, the training centres, the infrastructure and financial impetus. This is food for thought for Pinnick and Co.
