Former Super Eagles defender Taribo West has backed the Nigeria Football Federation in their quest to hire a foreign coach for the Nigeria senior national team insisting that caretaker manager Salisu Yusuf is not ripe enough to tinker the Super Eagles.
There have been calls in the local media for the former Kano Pillars coach to be allowed to coach Nigeria through the World Cup 2018 qualifiers based on his recent exploit with the team in friendly games against Mali and Luxembourg.
However West who played for the Super Eagles from 1997 to 2002 believes people making calls for Yusuf to be retained are those who stand to profit from his permanent employment.
The outspoken former Auxerre,Inter Milan,AC Milan, Derby County and Partizan Belgrade defence hard man in an exclusive chat with Owngoalnigeria.com believes the tight nature of Nigeria’s group for the 2018 World Cup qualifiers neccisates the need to get an expatriate coach.
” I have watched with keen interest the debate on if Salisu Yusuf should be retained or not and my take is he is not ripe enough to handle the Super Eagles in competitive games especially at this time when we are under pressure for missing two consecutive Africa Cup of Nations” He told Owngoalnigeria.com
” The last two editions of the Cup of Nations we failed to qualify for was down to marginal technical error on the part of our coaches against superior coaches of our opponent, we can’t afford to make such mistake again.
“This is the World Cup qualifiers and with all due respect if we want to qualify from a group that has Cameroun, Algeria and Zambia we need a better coach than Salisu Yusuf”.
