What is all the noise about hiring a foreign coach for the national team? What has been the impact of a foreign coach on our football in the past? How many foreign coaches have won the World Cup for their adopted country?
“The issue must be approached from a multi-dimensional perspective. No foreign coach, no matter how seasoned, can work with today’s dysfunctional corruption-driven football system.”
That was how a former assistant coach of the Super Eagles, Joe Erico, reacted to the plan of Nigerian football administrators to hire a foreign coach for the national team.
Rather than employ an expatriate coach, he called for proper restructuring of Nigerian football as a way forward from the poor runs of the team.
‘Jogo Bonito’ bared his mind in a chat with TheNiche at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.
He said: “In my personal opinion, the way forward for the country is to restructure our football system from the grassroots as well as the league, so that it can attract players from other football-playing countries.
“We need to go back to the roundtable, review the system and put the right peg in the right hole.
“We should desist from the win-at-all-costs syndrome because we cannot win all the time.
“In football, you win some and lose some. But to soccer-loving Nigerians, you must win all matches, and this is not possible. That is the major reason we need an all-encompassing holistic approach to revamping our football.”
The exponent recalled his playing days when the main team of his club was fed from a ‘nursery’ team.
“During my days with defunct Julius Berger FC of Lagos, there was a feeder team for the club, from where we tap and discover young and talented players for the main team.
“Even the blueprint on the way forward for our league then asked all the teams in the league to create a feeder team.”
On the plan of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to hire a foreign coach, Erico wondered the rationale behind the plan of the Glass House.
He, therefore, called for reforms in the system.
“Our football system needs to be thoroughly reformed with immediate effect, if we really want to be relevant in the nearest future.
“Foreign coach of not, our football system must be reformed and we must do the right thing at the right time for the right people,” he stressed.
Nigeria failed, for the second time in three editions, to qualify for the African Nations Cup when the Super Eagles forced the Bafana Bafana of South Africa to a 2-2 draw in a crucial Nations Cup qualifier played at the newly-built Uyo International Stadium in Akwa Ibom State on November 19.
The team had won the competition in 2013 when it defeated Burkina Faso 1-0 in the final of the last edition of the competition held in South Africa.
