Duro Ikhazuagbe
As football stakeholders in the country await the announcement of a substantive head coach for the Super Eagles, Founder of the Football Coaches Association of African Nations, Dr Terry Eguaoje, insisted yesterday that employment of foreign coaches was not the solution to Nigeria’s football problems.
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is expected to announce Jose Peseiro’s successor any time this week from the list of indigenous and foreign coaches interviewed last month.
But the FCAAN president whose body is dedicated to providing the best courses to football coaches in Africa as precursor to ending the over reliance on foreign gaffers for the various national teams in the continent, said at a media parley in Lagos yesterday that if indigenous coaches get same treatment as those imported from Europe and Americas, the narratives would be different.
“In Nigeria and other African countries, the foreign coaches are treated like demigods. But from available statistics, no foreign coach has won the World Cup since inception in 1930,” observed Eguaoje whose FCAAN is in partnership with Baker University in USA.
Dr Eguaoje who is a certified coaches’ instructor, said FCAAN is out to ensure Nigeria and other African nations rely wholly on indigenous coaches, asserting that African coaches are equal in competence with their foreign counterparts and will perform better if given the same condusive environment like their colleagues from Europe.
“I am on a mission to ensure local coaches are given equal opportunities like their foreign counterparts. The problem here is that we have toxic environment. Some club chairmen put lot of pressure on the local coaches thereby making the environment not too conducive for the Nigerian coaches to excel. Every coach deserves respect. If we hire a competent coach, let him fail and grow on the job. But that is not the case. We are too impatient with the indigenous coaches,” observed the USA-based coaches trainer who has been involved in designing coaching curriculum at CAF level.
He confirmed that his programme is not different from that of CAF and UEFA, stressing that the difference is just in name. “I design the courses coaches take in CAF and it’s not different from those being offered by FCAAN. Our concern is bringing out quality in our coaches.”
Dr Eguaoje who started FCAAN in the USA in year 2000 said that his desire to ensure that Nigerian and African coaches benefit from his programme was the reason he decided to come to Nigeria every year. “ I’ve resolved to come home every year to help upgrade the standard of our coaches. Already, I’ve about 45,000 registered members. I have partnership with Baker University and the idea is for the coaches to enjoy good curriculum obtainable anywhere in the world here at home,”concludes the FCAAN founder.
