Éric Chelle to be Unveiled as Super Eagles’ 42nd Manager Today

While Jose Peseiro was the first Portuguese to manage the Nigerian senior national team, another milestone will be reached this morning in Abuja as Éric Sekou Chelle will be unveiled as the 42nd person to manage the Super Eagles  since September 1949, when England’s John Finch became the ad hoc coach of the country’s first national selection side.

Chelle, 47, will be the first-ever non-Nigerian African to handle the Super Eagles. He is a Malian, although still qualifies to hold citizenship of France where his father comes from and where he played his club football. He could also be an Ivorian as he was born in Cote d’Ivoire.

Although it has become conventional for football powers to hand over their national teams to citizens, there has been a paradigm shift.

Even conservative England, with a long tradition as a football nation, is having its third foreign manager after the Swedish Sven-Göran Eriksson, Italian Fabio Capello and now Germany’s Thomas Tuchel.

Nigeria’s Stephen Keshi similarly coached Togo and Mali and was on the verge of getting a job as Guinea’s manager when he died.

According to a media release by the NFF, Chelle, will be formally unveiled to the public at the Media Conference Room of the MKO Abiola National Stadium, at 11 am.

At Monday’s unveiling, the NFF will also disclose the names of Chelle’s assistants, with the crew to shepherd the Super Eagles B at next month’s African Nations Championship in East Africa, before focusing squarely on the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, beginning with the matches against Rwanda (away) and Zimbabwe (home) in March. 

Chelle, who took Mali’s Aiglons within breathing distance of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals, left his job at top Algerian side, Mouloudia Club of Oran (MC Oran) – 1989 African Champions’ Cup finalists – to team up with the Super Eagles.