The employment of a foreign or local assistant for Stephen Keshi for the World Cup in Brazil is still on, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, yesterday appealed passionately with Keshi to see reason on the need for an assistant that would add value to his technical bench.
This is the reason why we asked Keshi to recommend any coach of his choice in or outside Nigeria. Such coach will work under Keshi and not coming to take over the team. We also want to employ a video analyst for the team; The video analyst will read tapes of Nigeria’s opponents. For instance Take a look at the Brazilian bench. Another World Cup winning coach works with Felipe Scolari.
We’ve seen that our technical bench needs help. We saw that in South Africa during the CHAN competition. After Morocco scored three early goals in the first half, nobody offered any technical help to the players at half time.
We’ve noticed that we don’t have very good players and the good ones we have are not in the good books of Keshi. The World Cup is not for players like Solomon Kwambe, Chigozie Agbim, Benjamin Francis etc. These are players Keshi wants to go to Brazil with. We know that the World Cup is bigger than these players’’, the official who pleaded anonymity said, insisting that they were only appealing to Keshi to see reason for the sake of soccer-loving Nigerians to work with an experienced ‘’Assistant coach ’’so we can get a good result in the World Cup in Brazil.
However, popular lawyer Festus Keyamo and civil rights activist has strongly spoken against the involvement of any foreign assistant coach for Stephen Keshi if the Super Eagles coach was not comfortable with that.
The Nigeria Football Federation came together and asked Keshi to engage an assistant who would help add value to the bench of the national team in the Brazil World Cup. We gathered that Keshi bluntly refused the offer and asked for the recall of Sylvanus Okpalla who the federation disengaged after the Nations Cup.
Keyamo said on phone, I totally do not agree with the idea to engage a foreign assistant for Keshi,” he stated “the practice in most part of the world is that a head coach appoints his assistants and other staff. If Keshi insist he wants Okpalla back, “let them give him what he wants.”
