The Federal Government has said that it cannot afford hiring a foreign coach for the Super Eagles.
Addressing State House correspondents Tuesday, Sports Minister Solomon Dalung said unlike indigenous coaches, a foreign coach would not tolerate non-payment of salaries.
According to him, although the selection of coaches is handled by the technical team, his ministry has a role in guiding what is best for the country.
“I’ve always maintained that if we cannot pay indigenous coaches, we still owe them some months of salaries, some of them have even died without those salaries, do we still go and look for a foreign coach and will he be able to tolerate us without salaries for some time more also that we may also be paying him in hard currency? So, it’s a fundamental contradiction to swallow easily,” he said
The minister said Nigerian indigenous coaches had always recorded poor performance in football because they had not been able to grow above parochial sentiments.
Dalung stated: “An example is that, a coach will train a team, the team will qualify for the next stage, once it becomes international, they’ll now submit a different list of people, not the entire new people who qualified. This already has violated what’s referred to as team spirit in football. A team that played is different from the one going.
“We’ve that crisis on our hands now, especially with the list of those going to Rio. Those who qualified are fundamentally different from those that have been sent to go and play at the finals, making it look like those wheelbarrow pushers. You know the wheelbarrow is an instrument that’s not important, but can only be kept under perennial sun. Since there is a load, you go and pick it.”
