Former captain and coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Austine Eguavoen has criticised the decision of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to hire Portuguese coach Jose Peseiro as the substantive coach of the Nigerian team.
Peseiro will take over from interim manager Austin Eguavoen after the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations and will be tasked with ensuring that Nigeria qualify for the 2022 World Cup, where they are through to the playoff.
Oliseh while speaking to Bunmi Blair of Nigeria Info said the decision to appoint the coach is part of the fanatical craze to always appoint a foreign coach by the NFF.
“Why the fanatical craze to always want to appoint a foreign coach for the Super Eagles? That is the thing I still can’t get my head around. Is he telling all Nigerian coaches and Nigerian people they are not capable of coaching the Super Eagles? Why is this craze, I’m almost tempted to call it loss of ideas to always take a foreign coach and we always take coaches nobody knows before they come to Nigeria, why?, he lamented.
The former Ajax midfielder said he will support Austin Eguavoen for the Super Eagles job, even as a permanent manager and he expressed optimism that Eguavoen would deliver.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Eguavoen perform. I’m very optimistic for the man. I’m in total support of his being there. In fact, I hope he can do well and continue with the job after the tournament no matter what has been said before.”
Oliseh said that African coaches should be allowed to coach African national teams since most of them do not get coaching jobs outside Africa.
“The thing there is that there is very little room for African coaches to coach abroad anywhere, so the only avenue where African coaches can express themselves is back home. If you take that away from them, you’re practically just killing the profession for African coaches back home.”
