•Adegboye Onigbinde Photo: Sun News Publishing

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There has been spirited calls for Samson Siasia to take over the job of coaching the Super Eagles from Shaibu Amodu since after he led the Dream Team IV to the final of the football event at the last Olympic Games in Beijing.

Those crusading that Siasia is a better coach than Amodu, had persistently argued that the former Eagles’ striker has proved his mettle having led the Flying Eagles and the Olympic team to the finals of the World Youth Championship (WYC) and the Olympics within three years. But another former Super Eagles’ coach, Adegboye Onigbinde, has described the call as arrant nonsense.

Onigbinde agrees unequivocally that Siasia has proved he is a quality coach, but thinks he should concentrate on age grade teams, where he has consistently proved his mettle.

In exclusive interview with Sunday Sunsport, the Modakeke high chief bared his mind on Golden Eaglets’ ouster from qualification for next year’s Africa Under-17 Championship in Algeria. He also x-rayed other critical issues that bother on Nigerian football.

You have just witnessed the 2nd MTN/NFF Lecture, how would you assess the organisation, vis-à-vis the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF)’s developmental drive?
MTN and NFF did their best in organising such a lecture a year after its inaugural edition. I believe the NFF will now wake up and give us the type of education we need for the progress of our football.
Mr Simon Johnson, the acting chief operating officer for the London 2018 World Cup Bid, said it was awkward to bring him to Nigeria to deliver a paper on football branding because they (FA) look up to Nigeria when it comes to football development. What is your reaction to that?

I was almost shedding tears when he said that because I knew it was the truth and we have proved it to the world. I said it at FIFA and CAF meetings that Nigeria has proved herself as a formidable force in world football, but we are not doing the required things to develop the game further. That was what Johnson was talking about.

By now, we ought to have developed a system where the rest of the world could come and tap from our knowledge. But up till date, we are still crawling, or as a matter of fact, dwindling day-by-day. If we had sustained our tempo, we would have been in a position to educate the rest of the world in youth football matters. That was why Mr Johnson said we have to brand our football.
Until we branded our football, it cannot grow. Our game has to be of high quality, because that is what the rest of the world is expecting from us, but we don’t seem to know the value of what we have. Take a look at a country like Ethiopia, their economy is based on tourism, which has its base on their performances in athletics.

And mind you, even in the athletics, their strength is only in distance races, yet that is the podium upon which their tourism is based. Can’t we do the same thing here in Nigeria with football?
Try and consider the number of Nigerian players playing in all corners of the world. I think we have a lot to give to the world if only we could learn the truth and try and do what is right.

Coach Alphonsus Dike and his crew were sacked following Golden Eaglets’ disgraceful ouster from the Under-17 African Youth Championship (AYC) qualifiers; do you see that as the right thing to do now by the FF?
First of all, I am not happy that the Golden Eaglets are out of the cadet championship, but as a sportsman, I appreciate the fact that in any game that worth its onion, you win some and lose some. If you have to sack the coach and disband the team, then where do you leave the issue of continuity? And somebody will come out and say that Nigerian coaches are not experienced, from where do you want them to get the experience if you sack them at any point they fail? I am not absolving the coach or coaches of blame, definitely Dike and his men have their own share of the blame. But at the same time, we have a duty to get them going.

Mr Johnson told us in his lecture that whenever they have a four-year programme, they usually vote about £240million for it. When are we going to start doing that? That is one reason I said we should not crucify the coaches. Their case was like a situation where you send your son to the farm to harvest your yam without giving him hoes and cutlasses. Then how do you expect him to do the job effectively?
What have we done in developing our coaches? What have we given to them that we are asking them to give us back? I think that is where we have to start. I am not saying that the coaches do not have their own faults for not qualifying the Eaglets for the AYC. But again, let us sit down as individuals. If you have a problem, the moment you panic you get into trouble and if you now start cutting heads, getting people out of jobs because you have lost a game, then of course, you are panicky.

However, Nigeria is a large country. Nobody should tell me that Dike or Onigbinde is the best coach in the whole country. If we work hard and dig deeper, we will find people with intelligence, who can do the job. No doubt, Dike and the rest of them are intelligent, but again, we have to devise a way of making sure we get the best, whether players or officials. Now that Henry Nwosu has taken over, he may be the right answer, but I still maintain that we need to go back to the drawing board.

What do you have to say concerning ex-players managing top teams in most parts of the world today?
Playing football is not the same thing as coaching. If good coaches were assessed by their performances as players, then Pele would have been the best coach in the world today. But he kept away from coaching, maybe because he realised early enough that he would not have made a good impact in that area. When Platini retired from playing football, somebody suggested to him to go into coaching, but he said that it was only crazy people that would want him to go into coaching.

So, playing football and coaching are not the same thing. You must have the flair for coaching before you go into it.
I am of the opinion that we should find a way of compensating our outstanding ex-players and there are lots we can do to compensate them apart from pushing them to coaching. Somebody with Ph.D. in Mathematics may not be able to impact the knowledge on some other people, but somebody who never played football may be a wonderful coach. Where did Jose Mourinho play football? I can mention a whole lot of coaches who did not play the game but they are successful coaches.
I never played in the national team, but did I not succeed as a coach? Though a lot of people go to the ridiculous extent of saying that I never played football, when they see me coaching players and demonstrating my charisma, they are amazed. It is not everybody that gets chance to play at the highest level.

Can one say that Shaibu Amodu is better than Berti Vogts as a technical adviser considering his unbeaten run so far in the Nations/World Cup qualifying games?
That is a different ballgame entirely. When the Olympic team came back, there was agitation that Siasia should replace Amodu. But I kept asking why people call for a change just for the sake of making a changing. What offence would they say Amodu has committed? Since Amodu picked the team, he has played six matches, won five without conceding any goal and drew his first game, which was a mere friendly. So, what would one say is his offence?

No doubt, Siasia is doing well, we must support him, but doing well at a lower level does not mean doing well at a higher level. I was a schoolteacher for many years, I know that a teacher, who does well at the kindergarten level can end up as a failure at other levels. So, if Siasia has established himself at the youth level, why don’t we encourage him to continue to excel there. As for me, we don’t have any reason to change the current technical handlers of Super Eagles.
What is your message to the NFF, who are the employers of national team coaches?
They should concentrate on football development in the country