National Teams
Julius Aghahowa advocates for home grown coaches for Super Eagles
By Saheed Afolabi
Nigeria legend, Julius Aghahowa has thrown his weight behind home grown coaches in handling the country’s senior men’s national team.
The Super Eagles are without a substantive manager following the resignation of Finidi George in June and Aghahowa said the NFF doesn’t have the financial ability to hire a Herve Renard due to their past dealings with Jose Peseiro which they couldn’t meet up with.
He further urged the Nigeria football governing body should shift their focus on developing the Super Eagles and pave way for the home grown players to be included in the team.
“The coach (Herve Renard) is a very good coach, he has experience; when it comes to African football and even world football, we have to be realistic. Can we afford him with the price tag?,” Aghahowa was quoted by Brila FM.
“Even when the former coach was handling the team and he was earning about $50,000 to 70,000, it was difficult for us to pay him. We were owing him for months, and now we are talking about almost double of that amount, where are we going to get the money from?
“Why don’t we look inward and build a team for the future, forget about the short-term results? I have always advocated for the inclusion of home-based players in the national team. Because when you are coming up as a Nigerian player you play there, you know the suffering and the hardship, so you have that dedication more than any player that is coming from outside and dedication to serve the country.”
The former Bendel Insurance forward stated there are promising indigent coaches that can handle the Eagles.
“Also when it comes to coaches as well, I advocate for our homegrown coaches to be given the opportunity to coach this team on a long term.
“The way we think is the reason we get the results we do. If we want to give this to our homegrown coach we have our colleagues that have been into coaching for some time, we know them, give them this job and pay them well.”
