I thought they were friends. Did I hear you ask who? Of course, Eric Chelle and Austin Eguavoen. They sat through training sessions as captured on television and the few pictures dropped in the media. Perhaps, there was an understanding to allow Chelle take the decisions.
This writer, like most followers of the Super Eagles, wanted to know the relationship between the Nigerian technical crew and their foreign counterparts with Chelle. What one saw wasn’t impressive, raising the poser of why the NFF chieftains posted Nigerians to work with the coach. You could notice the cold shoulders given to Daniel Ogunmodede each time he ran towards the boss whilst celebrating a goal scored. I also noticed with pain that discussions with the substitutes on the sidelines shortly before they come onto the pitch were done by Chelle’s European colleagues. The second question, therefore, to the NFF would be why they chose these local coaches into the team if they were not going to be gainfully involved in all aspects of preparing and executing tactics before, during and after games have been won, drawn or lost.
All through the matches played at the AFCON, my focus was the oddities of the games – those things the live coverage hid from us back home. And the sight of watching the brief spells anytime the cameramen zoomed on the Nigerian bench sank my heart. They couldn’t be bothered if they sat on the bench as bystanders and not active participants worth their while provided their wages, entitlements and bonuses were paid.
Pity. What hurts is that the Nigerian coaches on the bench in Morocco learned nothing new which they could use to train their teams beyond the physical exercises they watched while their boss brazenly gave the assistants he came along with enough instructions with the aid of the computers and note pads. I was, therefore, excited reading the story conducted with the incumbent Technical Director and former Super Eagles coach and captain Austin ‘Cerezo’ Eguaveon in the print media.
This time Eguaveon literarily kicked Chelle in his teeth when he said in the interview that: “I felt disappointed that we did not include some NPFL players in the AFCON squad. Some players in the team did not even get a minute of action, so why couldn’t we include a few players from the local league? At least three or four would have been better.”
“The players are not bad, and just because we didn’t do well at CHAN doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“This is something we need to look into because it speaks volumes when players come directly from the local league into a major tournament like AFCON.”
At least five of them in the 2025 AFCON squad didn’t play anytime. Why then did Chelle not pick players from the domestic league? Was it not Chelle who chose all the home-based players he selected for the CHAN tournament? An admittance of failure on Chelle’s part of his poor selection of the domestic league players. In fact, I thought Chelle would have replaced injured Cyriel Dessers with one of the enterprising home-based players to serve as his learning curve. It didn’t occur to NFF chiefs also to replace Dessers who left the camp injured with a home-based player.
“We can only advise him; we cannot force players on him. I must also say that he has a lot of respect for the players and wants to see how he can gradually bring them through. We have discussed this a few times, but the timing has to be right,” Eguavoen explained.
“If he stays in the country more often, he will have better opportunities to visit venues and watch players. If he doesn’t, it becomes more difficult,” he added.
Pray Eguavoen, this has always been the crux of the matter for those foreign coaches employed with our money whenever they throw the home-based players under the bus. Instead of the NSC and NFF chieftains to sit down and bridge the gap between the home-based and foreign-based players getting into the World Cup squad in 2030, they were busy planting one-sided stories which portray the falsehood of Nigeria qualifying for the last stage of the qualification matches in March.
These two bodies’ tardy handling of matters concerning the qualification game of the 2026 Mundial want to force Nigeria back into the race at the expense of D.R Congo. Do they want to drag us to the World Cup with fresh stories of unfulfilled promises and failure to pay the players and coaches their match bonuses in the United States (US), Canada and Mexican cities? Shouldn’t Nigerians be told how they fared in all facets of the country’s participation at the AFCON tournament in Morocco, especially the team’s finances with particular attention to those things which poured odium on the country?
”I can’t tell what is going on and it’s the same for all of us in the board of the NFF at the moment. FIFA hasn’t officially charged DR Congo with any infraction. So it’s a whole lot of confusion down here”, he said.
He however said a ruling is expected next month before the playoff in March, confirming that the NFF will no doubt lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) if they don’t get justice from FIFA.
”If we don’t get the justice that we expect, then CAS will be the next stop. That I can assure you”, he concluded.
Can somebody in government not stop these half-truths in the media by our visionless sport administrators whose primary concern is to travel with the teams to competitions outside the country, instead of ensuring that the game is given the fillip of growth that it needs? Who issued the passports and passed them as legitimate documents to the D.R Congo players? How come no eyebrows were raised against the Congolese until our desperate officials latched on it? Since when did FIFA become immigration officials on passport documentation?
Rather than our NFF and NSC chieftains dissipate energy on this D.R Congo misadventure with FIFA and later CAS, they should find a suitable accommodation space for Chelle to reside in fitted with state-of-art gadgets and recreational facilities within his house for exercises in Abuja, if indeed we expect him to truly monitor our home-based players himself. It won’t shock anyone if we are told that Chelle doesn’t have an official vehicle(s) with all the vehicles the big men have parked in their residences untouched. Money to be paid to the international attorney to handle the cases with FIFA and CAS will buy the SUVs for Chelle. Not so here?
I’m glad that Portugal wants an international friendly against Nigeria in Lisbon on June 6. This is heartwarming and the best way to strategically rebuild the team by dropping the ageing and injury-prone ones for new and truly younger ones who can only be found in the Diaspora, according to daily reports in Chelle’s media.
It is obvious the NFF and NSC are satisfied with these quick fixes than making deliberate efforts to revamp the soccer nurseries and academies across the country. I’ve repeatedly written here that countries which excel in sports don’t operate on fiscal budgets. They have sports funding done on biannual of four-yearly circles depending on the sport. Indeed, you don’t run sports by not hosting big competitions; if for anything else, to upgrade the country’s facilities and raise the awareness of such sport(s) among the people.
France, a renowned soccer nation recognised her World Cup-winning team in 2018, not because teachers or civil servants were unimportant, but because exceptional contributions demand exceptional recognition.
