Usman Abdallah bemoans lack of growth, improvement of Nigerian football coaches 

By Wale Mustapha

Usman Abdallah, assistant coach of Nigeria national senior men’s team has blamed failure of Nigerian football coaches to lack of personal growth and development.

NigeriaFootball.ng understands no fresh or refresher CAF coaching programme have been held by the Nigeria Football Federation since 2015, leaving many active coaches with expired certificate.

The Technical Adviser of Katsina United insists the deficiencies on the part of the coaches were also responsible for reduction in quality of players coming out of the country, while citing relevant challenges, including certification.

“How do you measure quality? Well, in coaching you have to study. I would say knowledge is not a gift, with knowledge, you have to wake up and look for it,” Abdullah told Brila FM.

“Spend your time and money before you get it. If we don’t have quality coaches, it’s very difficult to produce good players. And we can only have these quality coaches by doing coaching courses, and then also upgrading the courses.

“In Nigeria, we (coaches) don’t upgrade our certificates. Most of the coaches sometimes carry expired certificates because some of them were obtained 20 years ago. Some of them have spent 15 years without updating their certificates, but football keeps improving every day.

“Things are changing. It’s not an academic certificate; coaching courses in football are different from academic roles because they are being updated every day. So I think for me, the NFF has to start bringing new courses in.”