The captain of the Nigerian senior national football team that won the country its first African Nation’s Cup trophy, Chairman Christian Chukwu has dropped an advice for the Super Eagles coach concerning the 2024 continental tournament.
Speaking on the chances of the Super Eagles winning the 2024 African Nation’s Cup, Chukwu advised the national coach, Jose Peseiro to change his style and focus more on discovering local football talents.
He also called on him to relocate to and live fully in Nigeria to discover from the local league the right budding players that will get him results rather than relying completely on foreign-based players.
The former Super Eagles and Kenyan coach said it would be a daydream for Peseiro to visit the country play matches and leave like the foreign players who hurry back to their clubs after every national assignment and have a successful career in Nigeria.
“You can’t come in on Wednesday or Thursday, train on Friday, play on Saturday, and return to your base on Sunday and expect to build a team that can win Africa. It might not be possible,” he coached.
The Nigerian legend gave the advice when he was featured in the Channels TV Sunday sports programme on December 10.
He suggested that “the coach should live in Nigeria and build a team base before inviting foreign players to the senior national team. He should not be coaching Nigeria Super Eagles from abroad like the foreign-based players.
We have plenty of talents in the Nigerian local league which he has a duty to tap into, discover them, and build a formidable team that we can rely on. I am afraid that with this present team and the structure that is more ad hoc, we should not expect to win next year.”
Chukwu further said: “The reason Clemence Westerhof remains the coach of reference is because he built the home team that won Africa from within Nigeria. It is from those players he discovered that we started having a strong foreign players’ pool. The present coach has no alternative to doing the same because that is the only way we can have a team and expect to win Africa and the world.”
