Onigbinde Blames Administrators For Nigeria Football Woes
Festus Onigbinde, a veteran football coach and former handler of the Super Eagles says problem with the development of football in Nigeria is administrative rather than technical.
Onigbinde said this in an interaction with journalists after a 2-day Berackiah Football Coaching Clinic for 30 coaches of amateur football clubs in Anambra .
The tactician said that indigenous coaches should be given support and respect which their foreign counterpart enjoy as managers of national football teams.
The former FIFA and CAF instructor Nigeria remained one of the countries with the best players and coaches in the world but regretted that the administrators of football had not been able to optimise the resources.
He said while football administrators looked away when a foreign coach falters, their Nigerian counterpart would be reprimanded and sacked.
“Recently, Super Eagles were leading by 4-0 in a match and the opponent equalised all the goals, will they tolerate a Nigerian coach in that situation?
“I will sincerely say that foreign coaches are not the best for our country, Nigerian coaches will understand the situation better and patriotism is higher with them but the problem is that we are not doing enough to improve our coaches.
“I am worried that there is a gap between my one generation of coaches and those around and that is because we do not have developmental programme for our football, if we want to develop out football we must develop our coaches,” he said.
Onigbinde said the purpose of the Coaching Clinic was to improve the quality of football further addknv that the participants must have learnt a lot from the theory and practical lessons taught.
He commended the comportment of the coaches describing them as people who were ready to learn.
Also speaking, Matthew Olorunleke one the resource persons from Italy said they had come to contribute their quota towards the improvement of capacity of Nigerian coaches.
Olorunleke lauded the National League One for coming up with the idea of training coaches noting that it was a right step toward developing Nigerian football.
Emmanuel Azubuike, Coach of DOSAD FA Enugu said the training had enriched them with new mentality band new methodology to coaching.
Obidimma applauded the organisers of the programme and instructors who he said possessed good knowledge of the game and impacted on them the lessons that would be useful to the clubs.
Chidimma Ezeaso, Brand Manager of Aspire FC said the training was in fulfilment of the promise of the club to support the clubs in Anambra and develop the game in the state.
Ezeaso said it was expected that the quality of competitions in Anambra would get a boost if the 30 coaches applied the lessons learnt in the training of the players while assuring that more programme would be unveiled coming days.
