Nigeria football federation president Amaju Pinnick has stated that a new foreign coach can lead the Super Eagles to AFCON.
Gernot Rohr was sacked and replace temporarily with former Super Eagle defender Austine Eguavon.
Pinnick has now said it was still possible to fast track the appointment of a foreign coach for the country so that he could take full charge of the team at the AFCON and not merely be there as an observer.
“We are taking to three top coaches who can take our football to the next level. One of them gave me a good evaluation of our players in pure scientific way only on Tuesday,” Pinnick told The New Telegraph.
“The ministry of sports is working with us on this as our supervising ministry. We spoke to some top coaches on this including Jose Mourinho. The minister also spoke with the coaches and also Mourinho.”
Pinnick further stated that they believe in the ability of interim coach Austine Eguavoen and his team but insist if a new coach arrive on time he will lead the team to AFCON.
“We have confidence in the ability of Eguavoen and co, but if we have a new coach early enough, he will take charge and lead Eagles to AFCON. No sentiments about it, we want the best and won’t experiment with the team.”
Mourinho’s previous assistants, Jose Morais and Jose Peresiro, are top on the list of coaches the NFF are discussing with.
The NFF technical committee, according to Pinnick, will recommend the best to the executive committee shortly and so a new Eagles coach could be appointed soon after.
The delayed 2021 AFCON kicks off in Cameroon on January 9, 2022.
Sportscliffs.com earlier reported that NFF president Amaju Pinnick consulted Mourinho over Super Eagles job.
Pinnick stated that the NFF consulted Mourinho, who is one of the most successful coaches in football in their bid to get a top-class head coach for the Super Eagles.
“The emphasis on the new coach is discipline. We will look at his antecedents on discipline,” Pinnick said on Wednesday.
“Secondly, we will also look at how hungry he is to win trophies because if they are hungry it supersedes so many things and if he wants to win he will instil discipline. We will look at all these things but I cannot make a pronouncement emphatically because I will be undermining my executive committee.
“So, until my executive committee comes out within the next week or so to say this is the name because the technical committee has to bring their presentation to the executive committee. It is going to be a seamless movement to the current team headed by Eguavoen.
“But we have spoken to three top coaches and Peseiro, whose name has been going around, is one of the coaches and I can tell you he is a top coach.”
He also added that, “We also talked to Mladen (Krstajic) but after talking to him he got a job with a top club in Israel, Maccabi Tel Aviv. You can see these are coaches that are hungry and ready to take Nigeria as a home; they are people that we know are ready to face the challenge from the 200 million Nigerians.
“They are coaches who the players cannot be bigger than and I believe we are doing everything we can and that’s why we interface with the ministry on every level.
“Of course Mourinho, I am not going to tell you we didn’t talk to Mourinho because we did and the (sports) minister also talked to Mourinho and there is nothing wrong with it.”
Source: Scorenigeria
