Veteran sports analyst and administrator, Godwin Dudu-Orumen, has called on the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to tread cautiously on the appointment of a new chief coach for the senior national team, the Super Eagles.
Dudu-Orumen’s advice is coming on the heels of the NFF’s decision to unveil former Super Eagles’ player, Sunday Oliseh, this week as replacement for Stephen Keshi who was sent packing on Saturday, July 4.
He said: “Oliseh is a great pundit, but coaching the Super Eagles or any other national team requires more than that.
“It is a job that involves the management of human and material resources, the unsentimental detachment for the selection of quality players and choosing the right match day tactics to get the right results.
“The Super Eagles’ coach must have appreciable coaching experience and the professional savvy to harness all the ingredients needed to make it a championship team and battle-ready anytime.
“Preparatory to the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Brazil experimented with the Oliseh type prescription by engaging Joao Saldanha, a veteran journalist, who coached Brazil for the South American qualifiers. He appeared to have put a very good team in place, but unfortunately planned to leave out Pele because, as he said, Pele and Tostao as central strikers were two of a kind, the latter being younger and preferred by him. The Brazilian FA objected, Brazilians too kicked against it. Saldanha being a very strong character stuck to his guns and was sacked. Tele Santana then took charge and then won World Cup ’70.
“I see lots of similarities between an opinionated Saldanha and Oliseh, strong personalities, good knowledge of the game, and reputation in punditry, but short on managerial acumen and skill.
“And we are talking about investing the interest of 170 million Nigerians in a single person. It’s too huge a gamble for me to support, especially given the huge commercial losses and other consequential losses that greet failure to impress on AFCON (Africa Cup of Nations), and we experienced it with the non-qualification of the Super Eagles from AFCON 2015.”
According to him, a team grounded by perceptions of underhand tactics in player selection, poor and in fact obtuse tactical approach to matches, needing to be injected with a freshness in the form of a real professional coach and not one to learn on the job.
“Oliseh may be a nice choice, but nice isn’t good enough for the scale of problems the team faces. We need proven competence to deliver results not another time for us to have trouble sleeping,” Dudu-Orumen added.
