Former Super Eagles goalkeeper trainer Joe Erico has said that the national team do not need a foreign coach.
He argued that most of the past Super Eagles’ expatriate coaches under-performed and their employment were scams orchestrated by football authorities to siphon money from the government.
Erico spoke at the backdrop of the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea where 13 out 16 teams have foreign coaches. He said it was the evidence that African football administrators have inferiority complex and are greedy.
He said, “That is how complex and greedy our administrators are. The reason they deal with those foreign coaches is to siphon money. It’s a scam. They are not doing it for the development of the game. How many expatriate coaches have won Africa Cup of Nations?
“No expatriate coach has won World Cup for any African nation. African football administrators don’t have confidence in their own coaches. They want a situation where they can siphon money. They use the expatriate coaches to siphon money.”
The ex-Nigeria international argued that the use of foreign coaches has nothing to do with the technical depth of African coaches. He said indigenous coaches have been breeding good players from the grass-roots.
“If indigenous coaches don’t work at home to produce the players, there will be no players for the expatriate coaches to work with. Go to the grass-roots and see our coaches breeding these boys under the sun and in the rain. After breeding these players somebody will now come up at the national level and say expatriate coaches are better. No it is not done.
“How many expatriate coaches do we have in our league or the academies? What have we achieved with expatriate coaches? With the number of expatriate coaches that have passed through this country, where have they taken us to? As far as I’m concerned, we don’t have coaching problem.”
Erico added that the absence of the Eagles from the AFCON should be a lesson for all stakeholders in Nigeria football and advised that the national team should be rebuilt with a mixture of local and overseas-based players.
“We should start rebuilding with home-based players. In those days, when the national team was good, we were all playing from home. We have to start from home, then you infuse the ‘aliens’; I called the overseas-based players aliens because they are base outside. But they started from home. So, a combination of home and overseas-based players is what we need to build a strong national team,” he said.