What next for Super Eagles?

For what seems to be the birthright of Super Eagles to always pick the Africa Cup of Nations ticket, but for the last five years, the Eagles have fallen short on the ladder.

The Eagles have failed to qualify in two consecutive editions of the biennial tournament.

For the third time in five years, Nigeria will be missing from the Africa Cup of Nations party.

Nigeria missed out on the 2015 edition in Equatorial Guinea and have also failed to book a ticket to 2017 AFCON taking place in Gabon.

The one time African giants also missed the 2012 party edition, which was co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Nigeria won the 2013 edition in South Africa, and then failed to qualify for the next two tournaments.

The questions many football pundits, fans and stakeholders will be asking is: what is the way forward for the Super Eagles? First, we have to critically analyse what went wrong and perhaps learn from the past mistakes. Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers will soon commence and its expedient to start early preparations so as to avoid another upset

The hiring Sunday Oliseh by the Nigeria Football Federation in the first place to coach the Super Eagles was a very wrong decision.

One of the question Nigerians should ask NFF president Amaju Pinnick was how Sunday Oliseh was employed, what criteria the NFF used to employ a screen pundit to manage the affairs of Nigeria’s senior national team?

In other countries, coaches for national team are shortlisted, interviewed and the final candidate emerges, but in Oliseh’s case, the NFF president Pinnick single handedly picked Oliseh without undergoing any scrutiny from football stakeholders. That is the height of un-professionalism from a senior soccer administrator. Having a ‘fantastic CV ‘ is not enough criteria to earn a national team job, but include also your years of practical experience on the field as a manager. The NFF even went ahead to brand him the Pep Guardiola of Africa.

NFF administrators should be blamed for Eagles’s failure to deliver the 2017 AFCON ticket.

Way Forward

Samson Siasia did his best to salvage the situation, but the game in Kaduna exposed Siasia’s technical depth.

Siasia seems to be the master when it comes lower level, but in senior team, the former Eagles player struggles. I will advise he upgrades his CV and go for more coaching course to acquaint himself with the present knowledge of coaching.

NFF should go for a highly and competent foreign coach with a proven track record to manage the senior national team and make Samson Siasia the assistant, this will afford Siasia to learn from him just as Zinedine Zidane was an assistant to Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid for two years.

Truth be told; the people handling football affairs are not seasoned administrators, but politicians who lobbied their way to the position.

It’s high time the NFF top executives go for refresher courses on football administration and management; this will help broaden their scope of knowledge on sports management.

Again, we should focus more on our local league and make it a very big brand for investors to invest. The era of government financing the clubs should be a thing of the past.

As far as politics is highly involved in our sports, we are far from getting it right. Football business on other countries is a big brand and not a government business.

We need competent, honest and proactive hands with high level of experience to take charge of football affairs.

Since Amaju Pinnick took over as NFF president, Nigerian football have witnessed a downtime; missing out in two consecutive editions of the Nations Cup and losing out in CHAN as a result of poor management, reckless decisions and incompetency on the job. 

As Nigeria shift focus on 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, NFF should as a matter of urgency get things right ahead of the qualifiers.

Anthony Nlebem