With less than two months to go for the restart of the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, many Nigerian football fans are expressing worries over the continued absence of a substantive coach for the Super Eagles.
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Adding his voice to the debate, a former member of the technical committee of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Austel Elumelu opined that officials in the nation’s soccer governing body are taking a great risk with their continued delay in naming a coach for the team.
He scolded the NFF’s current executive committee for allegedly holding the nation to ransom and insinuated that they prefer running the round leather game as their private property.
While also expressing a strong view that an indigenous coach should have been given the opportunity of handling the Eagles this time out, Elumelu posited that steps towards hiring a new gaffer should have commenced before Jose Paseiro’s contract ended.
“We should have been looking for someone else when it became likely that the last coach would not stay after the Nations Cup,” Elumelu argued.
“As far as I am concerned, I am one of those who advocated for the appointment of an indigenous coach, who would be well paid to do the job.
“However, the way it is, we are taking a serious risk by not having a substantive coach in charge by now.”
Elumelu also took a look at the current scenario, in which two ex-internationals, Augustine Eguavoen and Finidi George, have served as the Eagles’ acting coaches, but he faulted that option as well.
“Maybe they are thinking we can continue with an acting coach. That’s the choice of those we have saddled to run our football, and they insist on doing what they want to the way they like to do it,” Elumelu concluded.
