The case with Austine Eguavon
Augustine Eguavon is the chief coach of the Nigerian Team during the African Cup of nations 2006 in Egypt. Eguavon who has once been a Nigerian international player himself was assisted by samson siasia and got Nigeria through to the quarterfinals of the tournament before loosing to Ivory coast with a goal scored by Didier Drogba.
There was a lot of criticism about Augustine Eguavons decision of first 11 line up for the game, with putting inexperienced players like Sani Kaita in the defensive midfield, Starting Kanu and putting Osaze odewingie in the midfield instead of John Utaka. I personally would say that the performance of the eagles was based on levity on the side of Eguavon ( i dont blame him), but i think he tried his best experimenting with the players he has.
Wether Nigeria was destined to stay in the third position for the last two nations cup finals, i dont know but at least we made it to the third place this time around again.
For those of us who think that Coach Eguavon filed inexperiences players, what if the likes of kanu, okocha, utaka, and the more popular names play and we lost?, i bet we will all say 'eguavon has filed old and tired legs'.....................what do we do now?, i personally think we should give him time to develop a team. Instead of hiring a foreing coach, why dont we use the precious money to train him abroad and get him to sign a five year contract and see how he goes from there. I wonder how the development of a team, coach and technical crew can be possible if the Football association is in a total confusion.
Do we get this?
In the match against Ivory coast the Coach make a selcetion which did not work for us and bad chnages too in the second half too. I remember in a nations cup clement westerof do something like that, when he ask Babagida to play from the left, when babagida is a right winder and he score the two goal that give us the victory. Suppose we lost in that match, We will all call for westerof head because he used babagiga in a wrong position.
About the technical advice for the national team, I will seat on the fence, because I think we need a sound one who can used the material we have to win the world Cup. I know that we have the team who can be at the third place in the next world cup and that can win the next nations Cup in Ghana. (Comment this)