The recent employment of Super Eagles Head Coach, Sunday Oliseh, by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has been received with mixed reactions by followers of football in the country. Oliseh, a former skipper of the Eagles was part of the golden generation (1994) of players that won the Nations Cup in Tunisia, qualified for Nigeria’s first World Cup and also went ahead to win the Olympic gold (1996) in Atlanta.
His major qualification for the job is the UEFA pro licence, which is regarded as the highest coaching badge in the world. Amaju Pinnick and the chieftains in the NFF were apparently pleased with the deal such that during the presentation, Pinnick tagged Oliseh the ‘Pep Guardiola of Africa.’ Guardiola without experience took over Barcelona and won 14 trophies with the Spanish football giants.
He is now the coach of Bayern Munich of Germany. The way the NFF swiftly engaged Oliseh less than a week after the sacking of former coach, Stephen Keshi, gave indication that the football house was not ready to work with the “Big Boss” any longer. The initial tenure of Keshi expired after the World Cup in Brazil and it took so much politicking after nine months before Keshi was reluctantly asked to continue.
He was said to have enjoyed the support of former President Goodluck Jonathan but after the exit of Jonathan, the NFF did not waste time in ‘flushing out’ the former Mali and Togo national team coach.
Back to Oliseh, we believe like many other Nigerians, that the NFF should have prepared him better before giving him this big task. For example, Samson Siasia was a former U-20, U-23 and Super Eagles coach.
He currently handles the U-23 team and his experience is not in doubt after leading Nigeria to clinch silver at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, only second to Argentina.
The NFF did not look in that direction and rather went for Oliseh whose best coaching experience was his stint with a Belgian division three B outfit, RSC Vervietois, for eight months between 2008 and 2009. It is however difficult to blame those who feel the NFF should not have given Oliseh the nod with such little or no experience. Keshi was a former assistant Eagles’ coach and a national coach of Togo and Mali before getting the Eagles’ job.
It came to us as a surprise that the NFF/ Oliseh romance clicked within two days after negotiations in London. The NFF announced at the unveiling that three-month salary of Oliseh was paid upfront by a federation that is persistently crying for money to execute its programmes.
Again, the contract papers are kept as secret documents by both parties and we hope neither party would cry foul over a breach of contractual agreement. We believe the timing of this change by the NFF is poor and one can only make such a change with an assurance of not rocking the boat and to of course deliver instant results.
Oliseh has a foreign Technical Assistant in Belgian, Jean Francois Losciuto , and together they are expected to hit the ground running. The reason is simple; Nigeria failed to make it to the 2015 Africa Nations Cup and no one expects a repeat of such football calamity.
Currently, the Super Eagles are not as united as expected. This is the first major test of the new coach and we expect him to face this issue urgently. The various crises that ensued after the Nigeria/Chad 2017 Nations Cup qualifier are yet to be extinguished.
The Oliseh we know has egoistic tendencies, same attitude which the current NFF President, Pinnick, is also guilty of.
The relationship between the two strong personalities in the next three years is important to enable the Super Eagles to post the expected results. Oliseh is expected to work with the Shaibu Amodu-led technical committee and we believe this is another potential crisis area.
The new coach has ego and will always want to take his decisions at every point in time. The situation in the domestic league is getting better and we make bold to say Oliseh can get some quality players if he stays around to monitor the players in the Nigeria Premier League. Whether the coach is ready for such an endevour is another issue entirely.
The qualifying series of the 2017 Nations Cup started on June 13 when the Eagles defeated Chad 2-0 in Kaduna and with Egypt in the same group with Nigeria, the Eagles will have to double efforts to grab the only automatic ticket at stake in the group.
They are billed to play Tanzania away in the next qualifying fixture and nothing short of victory is expected from Oliseh. As it is, the NFF and Oliseh will have no excuse for failure as both parties have been speaking well on the country’s chances.
Oliseh is yet to meet the players but he must devise both short and medium term plans to produce results for the team. Nigerians love football and they are yearning for impressive results from the Super Eagles
