Pinnick denies plan to hire ‘foreign super coach’ for Super Eagles

Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President, Amaju Pinnick, yesterday in Lagos dismissed the reported plot by the federation to employ a ‘foreign super coach’ as head of the Super Eagles’ technical crew. He, however, admitted that the NFF would help Oliseh to solve Super Eagles’ goal scoring problem if he demanded such assistance.

Pinnick insisted that the NFF had utmost faith in the ability of Oliseh to reposition the senior national team, adding that the former Super Eagles’ captain was a key part of the programme to lift Nigerian football.

“I never said we would employ a heavyweight coach. What I said was that if goal scoring was a problem, we could help him interface with a coach whose club scores plenty of goals. It can be done through an internship which we will sponsor,” he said.

He revealed that the federation was working at building a cordial relationship among the coaches of the national teams, positing that such a development will aid seamless transition of the teams.

“For instance, we have appointed Emmanuel Amunike as Manu Garba’s assistant in the U-20 team so that the players, who won the U-17 World Cup in Chile recently, can move smoothly to the next level. Amunike will still retain his job at the U-17 level.

“If there were a close relationship between Samson Siasia’s team and the U-23 Eagles, there would have been many players from the CHAN team in Senegal,” he added.