President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Ibrahim Gusau has revealed that the football house is still hunting for the next Super Eagles coach.
The national men’s team had been without a substantive coach since June after the resignation of Finidi George, who took over after the exit of Portuguese gaffer Jose Peseiro in March.
Although Austin Eguavoen had stayed in charge of the team on the interim, the NFF president said the football house was still in talks with different coaches and would soon acquire the services of one.
“For Super Eagles coach, it is a process. Along the line we started a process we almost concluded, we reached an agreement but later on once you have middle men and most of these coaches have agents,” he said.
“You sit down and have agreement and just for you to wake up and they will bring up something that was not part of the agreement which is practically impossible.
“We cannot sit down and engage our country in something that we cannot answer so that is basically what is going on and we are almost done about it and we are doing our best to ensure that by the time we come up with a coach he would be someone that would take us to the next level.”
Ripples Nigeria recalls that the NFF had announced the appointment of Bruno Labbadia as Super Eagles boss, but the German later turned around to pull out of the agreement.
Gusau also expressed confidence that the Super Eagles would still qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup despite a poor start.
Read Also: Why we couldn’t secure Labbadia as Super Eagles coach —NFF
The Eagles have only recorded three points from four games, drawing three and losing one game, and are in fifth position.
“I have much confidence we will qualify for the next World Cup in 2026,” Gusau added.
“I know we have a very bad start, having just three points from four matches. But if you look at the momentum now there is a level of progress.
“Everybody know what is at stake and we are surely going to do our best to support the team. We have just started our qualifiers for the next Nations Cup in Morocco 2025 and by the grace of God that would be our breakthrough to winning our fourth AFCON title.”
Gusau also talked about the coaching role of the national women’s team, the Super Falcons.
He said: “We have started to see that we get a coach for the Super Falcons but before that because we are planning to see how we can utilize the FIFA window we are going to have in October to see how we can engage the team. We want to see how we start grooming some of our young girls from the league and inject them into the Super Falcons.
“The current coach that is in the interim is going to invite some of our local players and have a camp with them and later during the FIFA window some of the foreign players will be invited.”
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