Win or lose, Augustine Eguavoen should not be judged by the outcome of the Super Eagles final result in the on-going Africa Nation’s Cup in Cameroon.
To begin with, he went to the event as a caretaker coach. This means, he has a weak mandate. He’s just an interim coach, who is expected to leave the job once a substantive gaffer is appointed.
Now, the Portuguese, Jose Peseiro has been appointed as the new Super Eagles Coach. He is Cameroon as part of Nigeria’s contingent to observe the players. In his capacity as the coach-in-waiting, he’d assess the boys and have first hand information on their fitness levels and capabilities. That’s what we were told by the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF.
Perhaps, this is not a bad idea, but the appointment of a foreign coach after our unhappy experience with Gernot Rohr who spent about six years with nothing to show, it is ill-advised to appoint another foreign coach at this time. The groundswell of opinion within the sports fraternity is that our retired players should coach the Super Eagles for a change.
What most countries and top clubs do now is to appoint ex-internationals to coach their teams. That should have been the case with Nigeria now, given the global trend. Besides, Peseiro’s pedigree is not encouraging. His last job was handling of Venezuela, a Latin nation in serious political crisis, with no strong soccer culture, like their neighbours, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Uruguay or even, Bolivia.
Even at that, he didn’t perform. He abandoned the Venezuela job after been owed for months, and he didn’t produce any remarkable results. If Nigeria must appoint a foreign coach, why not go for a man whose competence is not in doubt?
What happens if Eguavoen does the unexpected and goes ahead to win the Nation’s Cup? Would he be asked to still step down for Peseiro? Would the, NFF tell the Portuguese to go? These, certainly, are unlikely scenarios, but anything can happen.
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