Former captain of the senior national team of Nigeria John Obi Mikel has given reasons why the senior national team of Nigeria has proven to be too big a job for Indigenous coaches.
During his time with the senior national team of Nigeria Mikel played under five Nigerian coaches with the peak of it coming when Stephen Keshi led the team to Africa Cup of Nations glory in 2013.
Indigenous coaches somehow failed to build on that achievement and it resulted in the hiring of former coach Gernot Rohr. Rohr was sacked last year for Austine Eguavoen who failed to qualify the team for the World Cup.
Mikel was asked about his opinion on the debate about foreign coaches and indigenous coaches. He first of all said the time given to most foreign coaches isn’t same as their indigenous counterparts.
“Whichever way you look at it, there is always a good reason to have your own, develop him, give him all the cooperation. The indigenous coaches need to be given longer time to get the best out of them. (Austin) Eguavoen was in-charge for less than three months before he was sacked but when we pay a lot to hire foreign managers and results are not forth coming, we still give them a lot of time before we fire them”, he told the online version of This Day
He went further by calling on the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to treat the local coaches with respect then pointed out what he feels is the main problem they have, which to him is identifying the leader on the pitch.
“I think our local coaches deserve better treatments to get the best out of them. Less I forget, Samson Siasia was another good coach but I don’t know what the problem is. I just hope he would have sorted himself now. He is one coach I worked with and I know his capability as a manager same with Eguavoen who was my first manager in the national team (U-17 World Cup).
“But the major problem of the indigenous coaches is that they always find it difficult to locate the player leader on the pitch and the moment you don’t have that it becomes a problem”, he remarked.
