Nigeria Football Federation President Amaju Pinnick has said that they held talks with AS Roma manager, Jose Mourinho while in search of a new Super Eagles coach.
Pinnink disclosed this during a media parley with sports journalists in Lagos on Wednesday December 22. He said the Super Eagles would get a new coach “within next week or so”, meaning interim coach of the team Austin Eguavoen might not take the squad to the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, which begins on January 9, 2022 in Cameroon.
Recounting efforts in getting a new coach for the national team, Pinnick said the NFF held talks with Serbian Mladen Krstajic and Jose Mourinho in their bid to get a top-class coach for the national team. He also revealed that Portuguese Jose Peseiro, a former Real Madrid assistant coach and FC Porto head coach, was on the three-man shortlist for the Eagles coaching job.
The NFF President said:
“The emphasis on the new coach is discipline. We will look at his antecedents on discipline.
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.
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.”
Pinnick however refused to reveal the coach who will manage the Eagles at the AFCON. He said:
“If the coach will give us the Nations Cup, he will be drafted in immediately. I am not going to tell you that it will be later, because of what essence is the recruitment? If the executive committee says yes and we are ready, what are we waiting for?
When I spoke with one of the coaches on Tuesday, he was already scouting our players and was telling me things I didn’t even know about our players. It was quite impressive and he told me the strength of each player and he took me off guard. We are not going to experiment and if he can win the Nations Cup, no problem.
We know Eguavoen can do it, but we also want someone who can do it better. If we are unable to sign him soon, then we will work with the current team. But I am not going to tell you that if we have him signed today, he is not going to lead the team to the AFCON.”
Eguavoen was announced as interim coach of Super Eagles after Franco-German Gernot Rohr was sacked on December 12.
