NFF set to appoint substantive Super Eagles head coach before start of Nations Cup in January

NIGERIAN Football Federation (NFF) chairman Amaju Pinnick is confident that a substantive coach will be named to manage the Super Eagles before the start of the forthcoming African Cup of Nations tournament in Cameroon.

On January 9, the 33rd African Cup of Nations will kick off in Yaounde, the Cameroonian capital with Nigeria among the 24 teams participating. Earlier this month on December 12, the NFF had sacked Super Eagles coach Gernot Rohr over the team's poor results and named Austin Eguavoen as interim manager.

It had been thought that Eguavoen would at least take the Eagles to the Nations Cup but Mr Pinnick has revealed that the NFF is hoping to appoint a substantive manager within a week. Already, Mr Pinnick has held talks with the likes of Roma manager Jose Mourinho about finding a suitable candidate.

According to Mr Pinnick, the federation was in an advanced stage in its search for a permanent replacement for Mr Rohr. He confirmed that the NFF had held talks with Serbian Mladen Krstajic, adding that Portuguese manager Jose Peseiro, a former Real Madrid assistant coach and FC Porto head coach, was also on the three-man shortlist for the Eagles coaching job.

Mr Pinnick said: “The emphasis on the new coach is discipline. We will look at his antecedents on discipline.

“Secondly, we will also look at how hungry he is to win trophies because if they are hungry it supersedes so many things and if he wants to win he will instil discipline. We will look at all these things but I cannot make a pronouncement emphatically because I will be undermining my executive committee.

“So, until my executive committee comes out within the next week or so to say this is the name, it is going to be a seamless movement to the current team headed by Eguavoen. However, 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.

“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 and are people that we know are ready to face the challenge from the 200 million Nigerians.

“They are coaches who the players cannot be bigger than and I believe we are doing everything we can and that’s why we interface with the ministry on every level. Of course Mourinho, I am not going to tell you we didn’t talk to Mourinho because we did and the sports minister also talked to Mourinho and there is nothing wrong with it.”

 “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 know Eguavoen can do it but we also want someone who can do it better. If we are unable to sign him soon, then we will work with the current team but I am not going to tell you that if we have him signed today, he is not going to lead the team to the African Cup of Nations."

Mr Peseiro  is thought to be the front runner for the job having recently resigned from his role as head coach of Venezuela. Believed to have been recommended by Mr Mourinho, Mr Peseiro, 61, was an assistant manager at Real Madrid during the 2003/04 season and has loads of experience managing Portuguese club sides Sporting Lisbon, Braga.

He led Sporting to the 2005 Uefa Cup final, where they lost 3-1 to CSKA Moscow, before managing giants Porto in 2016. Mr Peseiro  was also in charge of the Saudi Arabian national team between 2009 and 2011.