WHAT CHOICE OF FINIDI GEORGE OVER EMMANUEL AMUNEKE PORTENDS FOR SUPER EAGLES AND NIGERI
Anthony Akalugo
Nigeria is a funny country where unsaid issues determine the ranking of critical criteria for choices. The long process of replacement of Jose Peseiro, even when Nigeria needed immediate action to fill the gap and move forward, owing to the sensitive stage of world cup qualification matches ahead and other qualifiers, shows how deeply involved individuals and power brokers were neck deep into the project.
In sane climes, the coach who groomed and assembled the crop of established stars of today when they played under 17 football competition and ruled the world would have had easy sail to clinch the position to continue from where he stopped, knowing fully the character and quality of his players.
Coach Emmanuel Amuneke demonstrated good understanding of selection and how to balance his team and the mentality to drive the best out of the players for a winning feat. But NFF found it difficult to appreciate that Amuneke, though has the requisite skills and can inspire transformation in the team, can serve as the role model who not only played for eagles and won African best player in his hey days, but also was a former Barcelona Football club player, a top performer any day. Coach Pep Guardiola and the rest of them ruling the world now we’re his mates and he can rightly invoke that confidence to prove something.
But his problem is that NFF felt that he cannot be controlled. He stands for the team’s interest, not an administrator who cares for how the lucre is shared. His problem is all about stakeholders management which means more to NFF than that the team succeeds.
NFF will always prefer a coach who will be embroiled in the red tape bureaucracy that stalls everything in the country, but Coach Amuneke will rather prefer to skip such bureaucracy and speak truth to authority. He is bold and short-fused. He doesn’t like anything that delays him in his drive for Success, and like the great player he was, he was a dangerous risk taker, who would take half chance to succerd.
Settling for Finidi is only to douse the tension their rejection of a qualified Nigerian former international would brew. But my concern is that there is no Coach that has ever succeeded in the history of Nigerian Glass House management who bowed to the whims and caprices of the dwellers of the glass house.
When Clemence Westerhorf was in charge, he was not taking instructions from anyone less but the president. He never allowed interference in his decisions and never shared his salary with anyone. He had no godfather within NFF and therefore was in charge. But the emergence of Finidi George smacks avalanche of intrinsic influencers in the process who will in turn place their prize in due course. This will become the off-field reality that will incapacitate him as the helmsman.
I will urge him to stand his ground and prove a point now or be anonymous forever. Emmanuel Amuneke can take the route of coaching local league or jet out to coach other nations and get ready for his time, for sure, it will come.
I wish super Eagles the best of luck with Coach Finidi George.
