Minister, NFF meet over Eagles coach

Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Mr. Solomon Dalung

Pius Ayinor and Idris Adesina

Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Solomon Dalung, and the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation are billed to meet on Tuesday (today) in Abuja.

Top on the agenda of the meeting, The PUNCH learnt, is the federation’s decision to employ a Frenchman as the next coach of the Super Eagles.

Soon after the Eagles were eliminated from Gabon 2017, the NFF President Amaju Pinnick announced that the football governing body had almost concluded the process of hiring a foreigner as a replacement for Sunday Oliseh, who resigned from the post in February.

“We have also scheduled a larger meeting with the sports minister on Tuesday (today) which will help determine the way forward,” he added.

He told reporters that the meeting would determine the way forward as they embark on some reforms and concentrate on the 2018 World Cup qualifiers starting later this year.

On Monday, Dalung said he had not been briefed of the proposed hiring of a foreign coach for the Eagles.

Dalung, who spoke on a SuperSport programme, expressed his support for Nigerian coaches, saying he would agree with the hiring of the coach if he was convinced of the need for such.

“The issue of the foreign coach has dominated the air but personally and as a minister in charge of a ministry, I have not received any report from anybody that our football problem is coaching and that we need a foreign coach to solve it,” he said.

“We have players that have played in the past and even brought honours for us and yet if we are unable to develop our own game according to our country’s tradition, then certainly I will have to be convinced with a superior argument that the only way out is a foreign coach.

“There have also been a lot of speculations and complaints by the local coaches that some of them have not been paid. Now if we have not been able to pay Nigerian coaches, is it a foreign coach that we will be able to pay?

“The hiring of a foreign coach should not be by verbal agreement because if we do such, we are also destroying the prestige of the Nigerian coaches. It will be a case of dumping them, after we have used them which is not good. I believe in Nigeria and I believe we should learn from the mistakes we have made.”