The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is back in the rancorous round of shopping for a suitable manager for the Super Eagles, following the exit of Coach Jose Peseiro. Besides the unaffordability of overrated foreign applicants, the NFF’s technical committee and stakeholders should draw inspiration from fellow African countries’ fidelity to indigenous coaches for long-haul success, CHRISTIAN OKPARA writes.
Hassan Shehata of Egypt became the joint-best performing coach in the history of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010 when he led the Pharaohs to their third consecutive title at that year’s edition in Angola.
In a competition dominated by expatriate coaches, Shehata won his first AFCON title in 2006 when Egypt hosted the competition and repeated the feat in 2008 at the Ghana edition.
The now-retired gaffer was following in the footsteps of his compatriots, Mourad Fahmy, who won the championship in 1957 and Mohammed El Gohary, who led the Pharaohs to victory in 1998 in Burkina Faso.
Before Shehata’s feat in 2010, Ghana’s Kofi Gyamfi had also won the championship three times in 1963, 1965 and 1982. These illustrious managers are among the 11 African coaches that have won the championship.
More African countries have now realised the advantage their indigenous coach have over their foreign counterparts and are now looking inward for gaffers. Remarkably, the last three Africa Cup of Nations have been won by teams led by indigenous coaches.
Emerson Fae, who led hosts, Cote d’Ivoire, to win the 2023 AFCON, was regarded as a rookie manager when he took over the reign of the team from Frenchman, Jean-Louis Gasset, when it seemed that the Elephants would crash out after the first round of their own party.
Eight of the 24 competing countries (33.3 per cent) at this Africa Cup of Nations had a European manager at the start of the tournament — that figure does not include Ghana’s Chris Hughton, an English-born former Republic of Ireland international with Ghanaian heritage. At the tournament’s 2017 edition, 12 of the 16 teams (75 per cent) were coached by people from outside Africa — 10 from Europe and one each from Argentina and Israel.
But despite the array of expatriates in the championship, Fae was able to rejig the Elephants and got them to rise above the pundits’ expectations to be crowned African champions.
Head coaches, sometimes called managers, are among the highest-paid individuals in club and international football. They are so important in the game, a big business in modern times, that some coaches earn more than their countries’ presidents. They are seen as employees with special skills, which are hard to acquire.
This is apart from other add-ons like bonuses and camp allowances.
In some other countries, head coaches earn far more than Peseiro’s monthly take home, just as some others pay their managers less. Countries spend all these huge sums because they want the best for their national teams.
Globally, national football associations select their head coaches carefully with clear goals for the managers to achieve. It is said that a team is as good as its manager because the coach decides who plays, where each player starts from and the pattern the team adopts for each game.
Although many countries invest so much in training and retraining of their coaches, it is generally accepted that football coaching is an individual thing, and the elite coaches spend so much to enhance their knowledge of the game.
Many countries, including Nigeria, look for the best available and affordable coaches to manage their national teams no matter their nationalities.
Such elite football-playing nations as England, Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal had at different times employed foreigners to manage their national teams when they felt they had no capable indigene to do the job.
However, it is believed in some quarters that no foreigner can lead the team better than the nationals of that country, who understand the culture and behavioural patterns of the national team players.
At the FIFA World Cup, while many of the participating nations have on one or more occasions employed foreign managers for their teams, the two teams with the most appearances, Brazil and Germany, have always been led by indigenous coaches.
It is on record that no foreign manager has ever won the World Cup, and only two have reached the final match: George Raynor of England, with Sweden in 1958, and Ernst Happel of Austria, with the Netherlands in 1978.
With many African players moving to Europe for career progression and learning firsthand how teams are organised, the continent has seen a rise in well-grounded coaches, who were former footballers in big European teams. These players also take advantage of the training programmes organised by the European football governing body, UEFA, to learn team management.
Europe’s football governing body, UEFA, established programmes in 1998 where prospective coaches enrol in educational courses to improve their skills. The top rank of these programmes is the UEFA Pro Licence, which certifies a coach and empowers him to manage teams.
What this programme does is that it schools retired players and other interested individuals on coaching and general football management. This programme has made it easy for such retired stars as Pep Guardiola, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Enrique, Xavi Alonso, and Mikel Arteta to transit from player to coach.
There are more than 30 retired Nigerian footballers, who have taken part in the UEFA training programme. But unlike their counterparts from other African countries, some of these retired players have not fared well with the senior national team.
Apart from the late Stephen Keshi, who led Nigeria to the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations title and a second-round finish at the Brazil 2014 World Cup and Samson Siasia, a winner of two Olympic medals with the U-23 team in 2008 (silver) and 2016 (bronze), the country has not fared too well with its indigenous coaches.
Stakeholders are quick to argue against handing over the Super Eagles to indigenous coaches, citing the recent inability of the team, under Austin Eguavoen, to qualify for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Nigeria, which needed to beat ‘a poor Ghanaian team’ over two legs in the last qualifying round for the World Cup, lost the ticket to the Black Stars on the away goals rule after a goalless draw in Cape Coast and a 1-1 draw in Abuja.
But some other stakeholders also argue that the Super Eagles did not fare much better under the now departed Jose Peseiro. Although Peseiro led the Super Eagles to the silver medal at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire, there is the belief in some quarters that Nigeria would have won the championship if it had a technically astute manager.
Former Green Eagles Captain, Segun Odegbami, described Peseiro’s two-year stay in Nigeria as disastrous despite the Portuguese feat of winning the Africa Cup of Nations silver medal with the Super Eagles.
The 1980 Africa Cup of Nations winner said that Nigerians desire a national team that would perform beyond what any foreigner or Whiteman without a solid grounding in football can achieve for the country, adding that the nation needs an indigenous coach among the many ‘that are more qualified than Peseiro’ to take the job.
He said: “Except we want to be enslaved forever, in our colonial mentality where we think that only the white can coach us to success. All around us, we hear about some Nigerians who are excelling in all fields of endeavours and they are leaving the country to go and help other countries.
“Football is not a rocket science, but a simple game. We have lots of Nigerians who have all the qualifications to take us to any level.
“For me, I won’t suffer from colonial mentality again and enough of foreign coaches. Now, it’s time for a Nigerian coach to handle our national team.”
Apparently in agreement, Super Eagles former midfielder, Waidi Akanni, told The Guardian that he was among those who opposed Peseiro’s appointment in the first instance because he didn’t see anything the Portuguese was bringing to the Nigerian team.
He said: “I have always been an advocate of a local Nigerian coach. However, hiring a local coach would not mean going for just names. Qualification and records as a coach are key to hiring a coach for the national team.
“We have good and committed coaches locally with the likes of Emmanuel Amunike, Gbenga Ogunbote, Finidi George and Makaiba, among others, showing that they can do the job.”
Antagonists of the idea point at the home-bred coaches’ ‘timidity’ and in some cases character issues.
On the eve of the Cote d’Ivoire 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, NFF President, Ibrahim Gusau, told a gathering of sports journalists that the federation was inclined to appoint a Nigerian to the position, adding, however, that most of the coaches being touted for the job have not shown that they are capable of doing the job.
“Some of the coaches attached to the Super Eagles have not shown that they can do these things. If you watch their training session, you will see them standing there doing nothing. It got to a situation where Peseiro requested that we second the U-20 goalkeepers’ trainer to his team because he found the young man doing better than those in his team.
“We will look at the indigenous coaches to see if any of them is capable of doing the job, but in choosing a new coach for the Super Eagles, we will go for the best possible candidate without sentiments.”
