61 year old Swede Jan Olof “Janne” Andersson has been picked as the new coach of the senior national team of Nigeria by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
The coach will replace Finidi George who left his post six weeks ago after a poor run of results in the world cup qualifiers games, where the team were held to a 1-1 draw by South Africa before losing 1-2 to Benin Republic.
Andersson got the nod ahead of the duo of Eric Chelle and Tom Saintfeit, who were the only two left in the four coaches shortlisted for the job after Herve Renard turned down the opportunity and Steve McClaren took up the Jamaica national team job.
He is expected to get down to work immediately with the 2025 AFCON qualifiers games against Benin Republic and Rwanda respectively. We pick five major high points of his coaching career so far.
1. In July 2016, Andersson was named the 47th best manager in the world by football magazine FourFourTwo. In November 2018, Andersson was named by FourFourTwo as the 17th best manager in the world. At the 2019 Swedish Sports Awards, Andersson was named Coach of the Year.
2. He lead Sweden to their best ever performance at the world cup in six attempts in 2018 when they got to the quarter final before losing to England.
3. As coach of Sweden the team did the unbelievable by finishing top of their world cup 2018 group that included defending champions Germany, South Korea and Mexico.
4. Andersson powered Sweden to the Nations League League A and led the team to high profile wins over Netherlands and Italy respectively to send them packing from major tournaments.
5. His record for Sweden reads 48 wins from 94 games earning him a 51 percent success rate in his time at the helm.
