The Sun News On-line

One time Super Eagles midfield maestro, Mutiu Adepoju, has enjoined the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to base coaches’ appointments on merit.

Adepoju, who was appointed as the General Manager and Technical Director of the Ibadan-based Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC) said merit should not be sacrificed at the alter of indigenous coaches.

“I do not root for foreign or indigneous coaches to be appointed for any of our national teams. I stand for who brings Nigerian football honours and laurels. I do not discriminate on who should be given a national assignment, rather whoever is (is appointed should do) a good job for Nigerian Football.
The former Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Racing Satander star added that much as indigenous coaches need encouragement, it should not be forgotten that Nigeria has fared well with expatriat coaches.

“Our home coaches need every encouragement they can get from the FA to do well. Look at Samson Siasia for instance, he has done very well for our age grade teams. He won silver at the last World Youth Championship in Holland. He repeated the same feat at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing China.

He is one of the coaches that need our encouragement. Shiabu Amodu has equally done well for the Super Eagles. He has played five games in the Nations Cup qualifying series and won all, I think he should be given the necessay support. I don’t think we have given them half of what we give to expatriate coaches.

“But at the same time, we need to appoint an expatriate coach when necessary, especially when one recalls that we have done better overall with expatriate coaches in charge. We won the Nations Cup first time in 1980 with Otto GLoria. Clemen Westerhof helped us win our second and last Nations Cup in 1994, same year he took us to our first ever World Cup. But that could not have been possible anyway without the support of Nigerians,” he stated.