The president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Ibrahim Musa Gusau says the soon to be appointed new coach for the senior national team of Nigeria will be in charge of the team for the CHAN tournament, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
The duo of coach Daniel Ogunmodede and Fidelis Ilechukwu successfully ended Nigeria’s wait to qualify for the tournament meant for players based in their various domestic league in Africa with a 3-1 aggregate win over Ghana.
Despite the feat, Gusau told the official media channel of the NFF that the duo will give way for a new coach who will also be in charge of the Super Eagles, and is expected to be known soon.
” Nigerians will know the coach of the Super Eagles very soon. I am sure you are aware that the technical committee sat on Thursday to discuss about it and I am just waiting for their report. If we go through the report and with the approval of the board, we move on, but definitely Nigeria will know who the coach of the Super Eagles, who will steer affairs of the team going into the world cup qualifiers”, Gusau explained.
” But the basic thing is that it is going to be very very soon because we are all concerned and we want whoever is going to take charge of the team to start immediately and that is why we came up with a policy, that whichever coach we appoint to manage the Super Eagles will be the one to manage the CHAN Eagles.
“So therefore you can not be given a team comprising home based players and at the end of the tournament you come and tell us that you don’t see one or two players that you feel can be injected into the senior national team.
“You saw what happened for them to qualify for the next CHAN against Ghana. A lot of people look at it that there is hope for Nigerian football because we actually saw the Nigerian spirit in the boys especially the match they played in Uyo.
” People are just talking about what happened in Uyo and not what happened in Ghana. It was not easy to get a draw there”, he stated.
He rounded up by saying the team will spend the next two weeks at their camp in Nigeria in preparation for the tournament, before traveling for a training tour from where they will arrive at the venue of the tournament in February.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
