The recent decision of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to appoint Portuguese coach Jose Peseiro as the coach of the senior national team of Nigeria has been termed a bad move by Jose Pedro Pais.
Peseiro was announced by the NFF as the substantive coach of the Nigerian team on a short term basis which will see him replace interim manager Austine Eguavoen after the African Cup of Nations.
He will take charge of the Nigerian team for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers which will be played in March over two legs. He will however be at the Africa Cup of Nations as an observer.
Speaking to Breaking the Line audio Podcast. Jose Pedro Pais, a Boavista fan and TV commentator said the appointment is nothing to be excited about as Peseiro is a poor coach who hasn’t lasted a season at any club the past ten years.
Pais insist Nigerians shouldn’t be excited over his appointment as he hasn’t proved himself to be a good coach per his recent appointment and to him, he is a poor coach base on the manner of his exit from the teams he has handled the last ten years, most recently Venezuela.
“Peseiro is a well known manager, person in Portugal. He’s been here for a long time, he is 61 I think , I don’t think he has much more to offer that we don’t already know but still. I must confess I was quite surprised, is there is something that still surprise me today at soccer is that we know managers can change according to age and system. If they have a good agent they can go everywhere in spite of the bad work they have done recently”, he said.
“I checked up his recent background because I wasn’t following. I haven’t heard a lot about him for the past years and I just remembered and he is not a manager that I really appreciate and I don’t think he is quite good actually and I don’t think he has done an entire season in a team for the past ten years. He was in Sporting, he was in Victoria, he was in Saudi Arabia, Braga, Porto but still for the very best ten years he didn’t finish one entire season. Which means that he is not that good.
“I don’t think he is the kind of manager that can go through this wave of good coaches that Portugal has. There is a quite of a fashion thing about coaches. It’s a trend about Portuguese coaches , I don’t think he finds himself inside this wave. Therefore I don’t think there is much to expect from him. Venezuela was his last work. He only got one victory in ten games. I think that’s a really bad record. He left to Venezuela at August. He said that he had 14 months without collecting salary which is not exactly the same thing when you coaching a club or country”, he further stressed.
“It’s completely different of course but I don’t see any good record recently not even recently, the last ten years at a team. So I don’t see how he can go very well but still Nigeria has a very nice team with players like Chidozie (Awaziem) from Boavista and also from Portugal soccer Zaidu (Sanusi) and also other big players like Osimhen (Victor). Ndidi (Wilfred) Iwobi (Alex) and many others.
“So I have seen that he is going to only manage the team after AFCON. So I think his success depends on the expectations on his job, on his performance and also this expectations will depend on how much success Nigeria is at this AFCON but still if I was a Nigerian supporter. I won’t be very excited at this moment about his appointment”, he concluded.
