Nigeria's Coaching Dillemma

You can’t deceive the players, they are too well prepared, intelligent, intuitive. Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning by Guillem Balague
 

1. When Samson Siasia was sacked as Super Eagles coach in October 2011, the consensus was that his demise stemmed entirely from the failure to beat Guinea in the final ANC qualification game in Abuja. Nothing can be further from the truth...
2. The distinguishing factor about the great coaches is often the attention to detail, the near obsession with full control of every little detail of the environment around the first team. When Nigeria beat an understrength Argentine team in a friendly, the euphoria surrounding the victory appeared to lead to a loss of focus by the teams' handlers.
3. The result was a botched travel arrangement that had the team arrive Addis Ababa with too little time to rest before the match. The match result was a laboured 2-2 draw which saw Nigeria go further behind on points, which in turn made the last matches a must win.
4. As I stated here, the overall responsibility for this failure lay with the NFF. But it was also a lack of focus by Siasia that allowed this to happen in the first place and then impact the team without a countervailing measure. This would never happen to a Fabio Capello or a Jose Mourinho led team!
5. Writing in The Guardian in the early 90s, I had always thought that the defining moment for Nigerian coaching would come with the retirement from active football and transition to management by the Keshi generation of footballers. Time has since proved me right; somewhat...
6. What I never anticipated was that these ex-players would be similarly challenged for professionalism as some of those they sought to replace. Or that many will lack the personal ambition to seek professional self development, like their counterparts in Europe such as Brendan Rogers, Ole Gunner Solksjaer or Vincenzo Montella, rather than wait for crumbs from the NFF, with a righteous sense of entitlement.
7. Football coaching comes with a certain in-built paradox. It thrives on self belief and the huge ego and stubborness that comes with this. Some of the very best coaches in the world have some of the biggest egos.. Yet coaches must surbordinate themselves to the fact that they are nothing without the players. Unfortunately, this distinction seemed lost on Samson Siasia who had come to the Super Eagles job with a huge wave of public support/adulation, and sometimes appeared to be reading too much of his own headlines...
8. Take the example of the spanish national team coach, Vincente Del Bosque. Once when asked about his authority, his stated approach is simple. “I have to be friendly and share as much as I can with them (players),” he explained. “I talk to them and explain what is best for the team. Transparency is the most important thing.”
9. Let there be no misunderstanding. Every available evidence pointed to the fact that Siasia and his crew did indeed work very hard. But it was not nearly enough, it was not good enough, and crucially it lacked attention to detail, with tactical details about the team organization either left unaddressed or never considered to be of enough significance to require serious attention (Link).
10. A continuing lack of professionalism by Nigeria coaches, both in management of the team, relationships with players and professional self development, has left Nigeria in a situation where there are no top coaches in the domestic game. Worse, nobody is invested in the development of players from raw talent to footballers. At the same time, no clear cut criteria and/or standard appears to exist in the invitation of players to the national teams at all levels. There is a feeling among players, real or imagined, that you require representation to come to the attention of national team selectors. 'You can't decieve the players'....
11. Far be it from me to accuse anyone, but you have to wonder, what are the technical reasons behind the continued invitation of a Raheem Lawal, first from a nowhere spanish team, to a second division Turkish team. Or Obiora Nwankwo, who though talented, has steadily gone backwards in his career. Or the decision, until recently, to persist with  the piss poor Juwon Oshaniwa for the better part of one year... 'Transparency is the most important thing'...
12. In my experience of following football, I've found that a coach doesn't suddenly become bad. It's almost never one big thing. Rather it's often the accumulation of small things. 'You can't decieve the players'....
13. Stephen Keshi's man management, especially with regard to motivation has shone bright so far under his tenure. But what is equally evident is a seeming lack of depth in his understanding of tactical organization of his team. Even when he talked football as a pundit, he often appeared incoherent.
14. In nearly one year of executing a strategy of developing homebased players for the national team, the lack of improvement in the two central defenders, Azubuike Egwueke and Godffrey Oboabona aptly underlines the mixed results from what I thought was a sound approach.
15. The result is that we have lost one year of the Super Eagles rebuilding project to the locusts! Even the much heralded Reuben Gabriel appears not to properly understand the role of a defensive midfielder.
16. But let there be no misunderstanding. In terms of playing personnel, Nigeria currently has the best collection of talent to emerge since the world cup in South Africa two years ago. In the context of the African game, Nigeria has the strongest reservoir of talent of any team in the continent outside Ivory Coast and arguably the perenially underachieving Morocco.
17. In the full measure of the African game and its major protagonists, Nigeria has the squad to make a very serious challenge for the ANC title. Of that I have not a shadow of a doubt. What we require at the moment is a clever manager, with clear and innovative ideas to make it all add up.
18. Stephen Keshi has the leadership ability to push the team to greater heights. It remains to be seen over the next few weeks if he has the tactical acumen to match. How he constututes his squad will be the first major indicator.