Another fish to fry

September 13, 2025 by Ade Ojeikere

The blame game begins. Where did we get it wrong? Not for the first time. Our soccer buffs have repeatedly shown their lack of leadership when picking coaches for our national teams. They rely on frivolous criteria, including name dropping of elite European managers recommending our morbid choices.  We are always told that such choices served as countless assistants to big and successful coaches just to browbeat us over their individual tactical savvy. Nobody dares to interrogate those picked since Nigerians only get to know the next coach at odd hours of the day through press releases.

Lilliputian coaches are recruited without throwing the offer open to knowledgeable tacticians with credible credentials to attend interviews where they are drilled, so that the best are picked. Instead, we employ journeymen who sign mercenary contracts where they would be living in Europe to watch our boys most times on television, rather than attending those matches to establish good rapport with our players’ European managers.

With this tardy arrangement, the coaches only remember Nigeria when they are challenged by their employers to either submit the lists of players to be invited for games, which could be done by mails or to find out when they would be in Nigeria for important competitions such as the World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations, the Olympic Games, WAFU e.t.c. Nobody sees anything wrong with the setting, since our federation chieftains don’t have to bother about the manager’s welfare and other logistics to keep him in Nigeria without an official car, house and other domestic staff to make his stay worth his time spent.

With handicapped coaches, we would find ourselves in a position where they can’t control our big boys. Our federation buffs forget that our better exposed players know good coaches when they see them. Such coaches’ philosophies prepare the players’ minds of what to expect from them. The result is the discotheque manner in which they report to camp for critical matches. Whereas other countries’ players who play regularly than our boys in the different European clubs get to their home countries 24 hours after their club matches, ours are spotted in parts of the country attending to family matters. The result is the chaotic manner in which our teams are prepared for competitions.

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Equally disgusting is the impudence with which our players are kitted with gadgets tied around their necks and mouths while preparing for the days’ training sessions. This underscores the low quality of the coaches we employ to train the team. The other day when the players were taking a walk around their hotel, almost all of them had their ear drums covered with different gadgets dangling around their shoulders. Of course, wires are seen around their waists. Pray, our players can’t try this hogwash in their respective clubs. Let me save you dear reader, the thought of how disjointed they walked around the hotel’s premises, with the big boys strolling behind the other players leading the exercise from the front.

One wonders why we are always late to take decisions on the future of the game here even when the broken roofs have killed many people and maimed others for life. The ugliness of football is such that we drew four of our home game, yet we expect to be ta the 2026 World Cup. It won’t happen. Our fire brigade approach to sporting events is primarily the reason for the dearth of sports in Nigeria, where influence peddlers get jobs that they’re ill-equipped for.

If we know what is good for the game here, the government should make the task of rebuilding the Super Eagles such that the ultimate target would be to qualify the country for the 2030 World Cup with four matches to the end of the qualifiers. It is achievable with the right coaches and a group of not more than five knowledgeable Nigerians to reinvent the Super Eagles of our collective dream.

If we ask the right people the coaches we need and how to interface with them through their agents, meetings can be organised to get the best man for the job before the end of October, especially if we start the search for a new coach now. The argument that the time to search for a new coach is too close is unacceptable. Super Eagles, the way it is structured and the coach that we have, including the federation chiefs and their NSC supervisors are bereft of ideas to stem the rot and would only lead us into another ditch.

If we compute how much it has cost Nigeria to prosecute these World Cup qualifiers, we would recognise our folly that if only we had stepped back from the tearful past to recruit a Grade A European coach. England for her claim of being the originators of the beautiful game are going to the 2026 World Cup with a German coach Thomas Tuchel, who needs no introduction in world football. Tuchel and England have an 18 months contract which I dare say would be extended after the Mundial. England’s Three Lions have won all her five matches without conceding a goal, and only on Tuesday beat Serbia at home in Belgrade 5-0.

According to a Reuters’ report on the Tuesday match: ”England have a maximum 15 points from five games and could even seal automatic qualification as group winners next month. Criticised for a laboured 2-0 home defeat of Andorra on Saturday, England produced their best performance under head coach Thomas Tuchel to punish a timid Serbia display.” I digress.

My problem with those insisting on having a Nigerian coaching bench is that they are quick to multiply the going rate of the naira to the dollar when the figure of what foreign coaches earn comes to the fore. They forget the huge returns on this kind of investment if the team does well in such a major soccer competition as the senior World Cup. Nigeria is in very big trouble. The country must wake up to the fact our national flag won’t be hoisted among the comity of nations at the 2026 World Cup to be co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico. I’m not an alarmist.

Nigeria doesn’t need journeymen European coaches who have traversed the continent losing games with aplomb. Indeed, we need young and enterprising coaches hungry for glory.

The Super Eagles next game is an away match to Lesotho at the Toyota Stadium in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on Oct. 10, before wrapping up their campaign on Oct. 16 against Benin Republic in Uyo. South Africa will play against Zimbabwe inside the Orlando Pirates Stadium in South Africa. Of course, Bafana Bafana’s last game is with Rwanda in South Africa, yet we are deluding ourselves that they won’t win Group C’s sole qualification ticket. These are fishes for the South Africans to fry on match days. They won’t bottle it.

As it stands, South Africa remain in a strong position to top the group with 17 points from eight matches, while second placed Benin Republic are on 14 points.

Fourth-placed Rwanda are tied on 11 points with Nigeria, while Lesotho (6 points) and Zimbabwe (4 points) complete the six-team table.

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