Technical Committee Should Evaluate His Ability, Says Adelabu
As the debate whether or not to renew the contract of former Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro, ranges on, former player and member of the gold winning Tunisia ’94 squad, Edema Fuludu, has said it will be suicidal to bring back the Portuguese to the national team.
“The man has brought nothing to our football,” Fuludu told The Guardian yesterday. “Anybody who is not white skinned and gets a little respect from the players will get better results. There is no reason to renew his contract, especially after he failed to encourage our league, which is a measure of a country’s football development.”
Speaking further, Fuludu, who is one of the aspirants for the chairmanship of Delta Sports Commission, said: “We have Nigerian coaches here and in diaspora who can do the job for half of Persiero’s remuneration. Let us encourage home grown coaches with training and retraining accompanied with good remuneration, respect and zero interference,” he stated.
While some Nigerians are of the view that Peseiro’s tactics is too rigid and over defensive, others say he is unforgiven and will have problem with virtually all the players on the long run if he is allowed to return to the Super Eagles.
However, former Green Eagles winger, Adegoke Adelabu, has said the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Technical Committee should evaluate Peseiro’s coaching ability with respect to the development of players in the national team.
“When we talk about the quality of the coach needed, we need to look at the standards of our players and our performance expectations,” Adelabu said. “We need to ask if Peseiro added any value to the technical abilities of the players and the general outlook of the team.
“We must know what we want as a nation before we know who to employ. We cannot just sit back and allow just any coach to gather players together across the world in the name of a national team. What is our football philosophy? Are we making effort to develop our own indigenous coaches? For how long do we have to run around the world to look for coaches that we will pay in dollars?”
The former IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan player asked: “What are we doing with the coaches we have.? What does it take to be a great coach? By looking for foreign coaches again, the focus will be taken away from talented local players.
The question we need to ask is what is our objective. Then we will know what to do,” Adelabu stated.
