Nigeria Football Federation boss Amaju Pinnick says the federation held talks with Roma manager Jose Mourinho in its search for a coach for the Super Eagles
Pinnick, who stated this during a media parley with sports journalists in Lagos on Wednesday, said the Eagles would get a new coach “within the next week or so”.
Eguavoen took charge of the side on a temporary basis following the sacking of Franco-German Gernot Rohr December 12, but Pinnick stated that the federation was in advanced stage in its search for a permanent replacement for Rohr.
The NFF boss confirmed that they had held talks with Serbian Mladen Krstajic and Jose Mourinho in their bid to get a top-class coach for the national team, adding that Portuguese Jose Peseiro, a former Real Madrid assistant coach and FC Porto head coach, was on the three-man shortlist for the Eagles coaching job.
Pinnick stated “The emphasis on the new coach is discipline. We will look at his antecedents on discipline. Secondly we will also look at how hungry he is to win trophies because if they are hungry it supersedes so many things and if he wants to win he will instil discipline. We will look at all these things but I cannot make a pronouncement emphatically because I will be undermining my executive committee. So until my executive committee comes out within the next week or so to say this is the name because the technical committee has to bring their presentation to the executive committee. It is going to be a seamless movement to the current team headed by Eguavoen. But we have spoken to three top coaches and Peseiro, whose name has been going around, is one of the coaches and I can tell you he is a top coach. We also talked to Mladen (Krstajic) but after talking to him he got a job with a top club in Israel, Maccabi Tel Aviv. You can see these are coaches that are hungry and ready to take Nigeria as a home; they are people that we know are ready to face the challenge from the 200 million Nigerians. They are coaches who the players cannot be bigger than and I believe we are doing everything we can and that’s why we interface with the ministry on every level.Of course Mourinho, I am not going to tell you we didn’t talk to Mourinho because we did and the (sports) minister also talked to Mourinho and there is nothing wrong with it.”
Pinnick refused to mention the coach who will manage the Eagles at the AFCON, but hinted that the new coach would hit the ground running immediately he’s appointed.