The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) have shifted their interest from Jose Peseiro to another of Jose Mourinho former assistant in Jose Morais, OwnGoalNigeria.com can exclusively reveal.
Peseiro was the first choice option but only because Morais who has won three league titles in two different countries wasn’t keen on leaving his job as coach of Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia owing to the interim role he was offered by Nigeria.
Sources reveal that the 56 year old Portuguese has now had a change of mind and has officially notified the NFF who have now immediately switched to agreeing a deal with him ahead of Peseiro.
“Morais has a better CV than Peseiro. They are the two top contenders and both were recommended to us by Jose Mourinho. We have settled for Morais and he will lead the team to the Africa Cup of Nations if we are able to reach an agreement soon”, a source revealed.
President of the NFF Amaju Pinnick also hinted same while speaking to journalist in Lagos after an event. He mentioned Peseiro as one of the coaches but sounded as if they have someone who is ahead of him in the race for the job.
“But we have spoken to three top coaches and Peseiro, whose name has been going around, is one of the coaches and I can tell you he is a top coach”, Pinnick said.
He added, “We also talked to Mladen (Krstajic) but after talking to him he got a job with a top club in Israel, Maccabi Tel Aviv. You can see these are coaches that are hungry and ready to take Nigeria as a home; they are people that we know are ready to face the challenge from the 200 million Nigerians.
Speaking further he explained “If the coach will give us the Nations Cup, he will be drafted in immediately. I am not going to tell you that it will be later, because of what essence is the recruitment? If the executive committee says yes and we are ready, what are we waiting for?
“When I spoke with one of the coaches on Tuesday, he was already scouting our players and was telling me things I didn’t even know about our players. It was quite impressive and he told me the strength of each player and he took me off guard. We are not going to experiment and if he can win the Nations Cup, no problem”, he concluded.
