By Obaloluwa Joshua, LAGOS
The Nigeria Football Federation consulted popular gaffer Jose Mourinho over the vacant Super Eagles coaching job, President of the soccer house Amaju Pinnick has confirmed.
The NFF are looking to appoint a new head coach for the three-time African champions after sacking erstwhile handler of the team Gernot Rohr.
“The emphasis on the new coach is discipline. We will look at his antecedents on discipline,” Pinnick said during a parley with the media on Wednesday.
“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.”
He added, “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.”
