Foreign Coach: Sports Minister, NFF Meet Today

The meeting will be centered on NFF’s decision to hire a foreign coach to lead the Super Eagles.

Recall that after the team failed to qualify for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon, NFF president Amaju Pinnick said that the football body have made necessary arrangements to employ a foreigner to coach the Eagles.

The NFF Boss defended his decision, stressing that no indigenous coach can qualify the team for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

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

Pinnick further told newsmen that a resolve on the future of the team will be decided in the meeting.

The minister had earlier said that he is yet to be briefed on the NFF’s decision to hire a foreign coach for the team, adding that Samson Siasia should remain at the helm.

Speaking to newsmen on Monday, Dalung said: “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.

“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,” he concluded.