Tag: Mallam Shuaibu

If Rohr Takes Over From Buhari as President, He Will Still Not Achieve Anything In Football- Mallam Shuaibu

by Joseph Odoekwu

December 2, 2020

When you appoint a coach and you say you give him target to qualify you for World Cup or reach ...

In this Hot Seat session with Nigerian Journalists on the NIGERIAN SPORTS CENTRE anchored by Akeem BUSARI , former boss of the Gombe FA Mallam Gara Shuaibu talks about Super Eagles Manager Gernot Rohr and other coaching related issues. Sports Intelligence Magazine brings an extract from the chat. The excerpt reads

On Assessment of Coach Gernot Rohr

I will say Rohr has never been a good Coach. Rohr came in under a very controversial circumstance. Many of us are not happy with the way the late Stephen Keshi was treated. But the powers that be decided to go and bring Gernot Rohr.

Many of his matches were not won technically. Those who brought him are doing a lot of things under the table and playing the politics of the game in the continent to win matches for him.

I don’t care what anybody may think or say about me, I know what am saying and I know what I am talking about”.

What is Rohr still doing in Nigeria that he cannot go and pick players from the local league and transform them? He is always looking for ready-made players. How can he invite 25 players and all of them are foreigners, some even having dual nationality. We are not ashamed and we say we are running football. Rohr cannot take us to anywhere

What NFF is Doing Wrong In Hiring of Coaches

As far as the NFF do not stop appointing Coaches for tournaments, then we can never get it right. They have always been appointing Coaches for competition and that is wrong.

“When you appoint a coach and you say you give him target to qualify you for World Cup or reach a particular stage in a tournament it is not proper”. You don’t appoint coaches like that; you have to appoint coaches for development, and it is development that we need.

This same people came here and told Nigerians that Sunday Oliseh is the Pep Guardiola of Africa. They gave him a 5 year development programme, they took him to the Stock Exchange in Lagos and they said he is going to provide Scientific Football, how Nigeria can develop scientifically, but how far did that go, we all saw how he left. The honeymoon did not last long and that was the same thing that happened to the Late Shuaibu Ahmodu. He was given a 5 year developmental programme, but was never allowed to implement it.

On The Technical Committee of the NFF

When you look at the people in the technical department of the NFF, you ask yourself, what is the quality of the people that are there, what are their pedigree, and you find out nothing about them.

There was a time they attempted to grade coaches, grading of coaches is essential, it does not mean because you are Coach of one obscure team in one remote village in Gombe, and you find yourself in the finals of FA Cup with Enyimba then you begin to rub shoulders with their Coach or any of this our senior coaches in the premier league.

We know how most clubs reach the final of the FA Cup in this country, we know how it is. Once you can pay, you can reach the final of the FA Cup or win the league in Nigeria and that is how it has been. The days when teams work hard to reach the final has gone. Those were the days of Leventis United, Abiola Babes, BCC Lions, Ranchers Bees and so on. Now it is the highest bidder.

Technically, we are nowhere and once the technical department is not functional or organized, you cannot get anywhere.

On Westerhof's Accomplishment

Let me give you an example, Westerhof was here for 5 years,. When we went to Algiers 90, Algeria defeated us in the group match 5-1 and we eventually played with them again in the final, that is a coach who knows what he is doing.

Four years after, he qualified us for our first ever world cup at USA 1994 and prior to that qualification we won Bronze in Senegal 1992, then AFCON title in Tunisia. FIFA rated us at the World Cup as the best entertaining team, that is an achievement.

How did he do it, when he came to Nigeria he had a vision and a mission. Even though some people said he used the powers at the top, yes it is true. It is not about having the political power block to back you, it is about who you are. Let me tell you even if you tell Rohr to take over from Buhari as President of Nigeria, he will still not achieve anything.

So Westerhof travelled round to Calabar to watch Calabar Rovers, Kano to see Kano Pillars, Maiduguri to watch El Kanemi Warriors, Minna to watch Niger Tornadoes, Lagos to watch Stationary Stores, Port Harcourt to watch sharks and that was where he saw Finidi George, and saw other players too such as Amokachi, Tijani Babangida, and lots more all are from local leagues discovered by Westerhof.

It was very few players that came from abroad. Under Westerhof you have 30% coming from abroad. The likes of Stephen Keshi, Ben Iroha, Uche Okechulwu and a few others. All the rest he discovered them locally.

What Nigerian Coaches Are Doing Wrongly

Mallam Shuaibu also acknowledged that Nigerian Coaches are part of the problem

One of the problems with Nigerian Coaches is back-biting. When a local coach is succeeding, some are praying for him to fail so that they can take over his job.

I have seen a coach inside the presidential villa when Goodluck Jonathan was in office; he came to tell a senior government official that most of the players we took to the Brazil 2014 World Cup were not supposed to be there. The moment he left I told that government official he spoke with to forget about him. He was part of the technical crew of Keshi, he is just a traitor. You cannot come behind and blame somebody that the two of you managed a team together .

He was one of the backroom staff of Stephen Keshi that went behind and says such thing about him. This was a keshi that won the AFCON title for us at South Africa after 19 years, how did we pay him back.

We have to be serious. Take for example the CAF Champions League that was played last week by some of our clubs, CAF said if you do not have a CAF A license, you cannot coach a team. Some got waivers but we have never had a CAF A in Nigeria. Even those who paid for CAF B in Nigeria, as I speak now they do not know where there money is and when CAF asked who collected the money, NFF are pretending they do not know who collected the money.

The truth is some of the coaches are not qualified to be seated as a Coach in any match organized by CAF. Those who collected the N250, 000 from the coaches for the CAF license must be arrested. Even the CAF license that they managed to organize I was told that one of those who got the license is a driver somewhere and yet he has the certificate. Another is an administrator in a University and he has a CAF A license, how did he get it. So the right people are not even nominated to attend the CAF Coaching course.

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