What Next for Nigerian Football?

The NFF has just fired Samson Siasia from his position as coach of the Super Eagles. Based on his contract and the minimum expectation from this contract, the decision is understandable. However in the full evidence of performance data and the big picture perspective, I am left with no conclusion but the fact that this was the wrong decision. But such is the nature of football, and coaches come and go.

The good news here though, is that the Federation has established the will to enforce a minimum performance standard.

However, as I explained here, there were two issues involved in the failure of Samson Siasia as coach of the Super Eagles. One is technical, the other is administrative.

While the NFF by its decision has dealt with the first, not suprisingly, no mention is made of the administrative failures that led to Nigeria dropping points in Guinea and Addis Ababa. I say this not to provide an alibi for Siasia, but a protective shield for the new coach, especially if the Federation as expected decides to continue with Nigeria-born coaches.

The bad news though is that the Federation has put itself in the same tight rope that a referee who begins issuing yellow cards from the first minute finds himself in, and would inevitably face pressure to sack any coach who fails to meet the minimum standards set in his contract, irrespective of any valid countervailing issues...

If the history of the Federation is anything to go by, it could be six months before a substantive coach is hired, with a caretaker coach handling the next couple of games and perhaps leaving the new coach to start from the very same hole that Siasia was made to begin with.

In sacking Samson Siasia, the options going forward appear to immediately center around Stephen Keshi and Sunny Oliseh. But there is always the possibility of the Federation hiring a foreign coach. 

Of the two, Keshi brings greater experience from coaching Togo and Mali. He also brings considerable leadership qualities and a power to motivate, as well as I suspect, a greater ability to 'work within existing structures'. But having watched his teams closely, there is a consistently worrying lack of detail in the tactical organization of his teams. In many ways he reminds me of Mike Singletary, whom followers of American football will know was the last coach of the San Francisco 49ers. A top, top player in his active days, he brought to the job and his players the demand and expectation of a high performance standard that he was never able to teach or communicate, and was left stranded on the sidelines screaming in frustration at his players.

On the other hand without the benefit of a prior coaching experience, Sunny Oliseh can only be evaluated on potential. As a player he had game intelligence, he understood the tactical aspects of the game and was a model professional. As a captain he expected and demanded minimum professional standards from both players and officials, a position which cost him a world cup place in 2002. To these he has added a UEFA coaching license. How all this will play out on the ground is anyone's guess. In my opinion, he and Siasia currently represent the two best prospects from the class of  '94. But unlike Siasia, he brings no prior experience of coaching within the dysfunctional and unprofessional environment of Nigerian football, which maybe a good or bad thing, depending on the angle you look at it from.

The decision to sack Samson Siasia leaves Nigerian national team football at a crossroad. For the NFF, going forward, the decision is whether to continue with local coaches or seek a foreign coach.

If they choose the former, the major lesson from Siasia's tenure is that the Federation must make a conscious effort to provide the enabling environment for our young coaches to succeed. The NFF must empower these young coaches to enhance their control of the players, not undermine it. The Technical Committee should use its position to provide scientific data to enhance the performance of the coach not constitute itself to be a screening body for evaluating a coach's team lists. And all of us must reconcile ourselves to the fact that these young coaches will have to grow on the job and will need time to establish control of their team and imprint their ideas.

The Class of '94 ex-footballers represent our only real opportunity to develop a cadre of top coaches. As footballers, their playing experience constitutes a far stronger basis on which to build a coaching career as compared to their homebased counterparts, even accounting for other important factors.

For many of these ex-footballers, the reality is that our national teams represent the only real opportunity to build a coaching career. The reality is that few European teams will readily give our ex-players the opportunity to learn the profession and build a coaching career. And even where an opportunity arises, they often get shut down by pre-existing prejudices as we saw with Mike Emenalo at Chelsea. Ordinarily, the NPL should present a ready platform. However anyone with a basic knowledge of our domestic game will know that as presently constituted, the Nigerian football club is not organized for the development of football, footballers or coaches. It is organized for the enrichment of the politicians affiliated to it and their hangers on masquerading as administrators.

For these young coaches, there needs to be the clear understanding that there are no shortcuts to professionalism in coaching. They need to understand that in the Nigerian setup where, with the average foreign coach everyone falls in line, from players to officials, the same courtesy will not be afforded them. They will have to fight for their right to be successful, the right to control their own players or select them, understanding that compromise is the path to mediocrity.

Should the NFF instead decide on a foreign coach, I would urge them to give considerable thought to changing our overall approach to recruiting foreign coaches, by instead hiring a foreign technical director, preferably from Dutch football. Such a coach should be given a much broader mandate than simply coaching the Eagles to include the redevelopment of Nigerian youth football through the Goal Project. His responsibilities should also include supervision of all youth national teams to enable him provide hands-on guidance to our young coaches. Such a process should enable us provide a viable path and support system for our young coaches to enhance their skills under the guidance of an experienced coach.

I will be discussing the redevelopment of youth football in much greater detail in subsequent write-ups.