Amodu relegated to home based Eagles

Category: Sports Published on Saturday, 06 February 2010 01:51 Written by David Ngobua Hits: 1217

After several days of serious debate as to whether or not the former Chief coach of Super Eagles, Amodu Shaibu should lead the team to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the coach was yesterday night relieved of his plum job as he was directed by the board of the NFF to immediately commence the camping of Home Based Eagles preparatory to the 2011 Africa Nations Championship.

Amodu, who qualified the Super Eagles for the World Cup, will now lead his assistants to raise and train a team of local players to qualify and compete at the 2011 African Nations Championships, a competition open only to players playing in the domestic leagues of their countries

This was contained in the communiqué issued by the NFF after the emergence meeting of its Executive Committee which held yesterday in Abuja.

In Amodu’s place, the NFF which approved immediate appointment of a technical adviser to guide the Super Eagles to South Africa 2010 directed its technical committee to commence immediate contact and screening of five candidates for the vacant position.

The technical committee saddled with the responsibility has former Coach of Senegal to the 2002 World Cup, Frenchman Bruno Metsu, Dutch football legend, Coach Guus Hiddik, Serbian tactican, Ratmori Dujkovic, current coach of Bayern Munich, Luis Van Gaal and Peter Taylor to screen.

After the screening of the five coaches, the committee will then recommend the three out of the five coaches to the NFF Executive Committee to choose the best for the Super Eagles before the end of this month.

In addition, the Nigeria Football Federation applauded the timely decision of the Federal Government to finance the hiring of a foreign technical adviser for the senior national team.

Even before now, the names of Guus Hiddik and Luis Van Gaal were consistently linked with the Eagles job and so their appearance on the five –man list would not be a surprise to those who have been following recent developments.

Consequently, many football followers have concluded that the race for the Eagles job would be a straight fight between, the two versatile Dutchmen and Metsu, the Frenchman who took Senegal to the World Cup quarter-finals on the country’s debut after beating defending Champions, France in the opening match of their group.

Trustsports can report authoritatively that even as the decision on Amodu was supposed to be the main issue, it was relegated to the background as some aggrieved board members instead commenced impeachment proceedings against the leadership of the board.

According to inside sources, the board members had issues with the leadership over the federation’s finances following the shabby treatment that they are alleging was meted to them during the Africa Nations Cup in Angola.

A member of the board who pleaded for anonymity alleged that over one billion naira was squandered by the NFF leadership on Nigeria’s participation in the championship in Angola, yet some of them were kept in the dark about the federation’s financial transactions before during and after the championship.

“Let me tell you that at least N1b was blown on our participation in the championship but some of us were shut out of all transactions. Instead, staff of the secretariat were given preferential treatment as if they are the executive committee members. The VIP treatment which was meant for us was taken and handed to some of the staff in the secretariat.

“Some of us are aggrieved. We are not happy with the leadership of this federation and we wanted to take drastic measure but in the end we had to re-consider our earlier stand for the good of Nigerian football”.

Consequently, sports journalists who had besieged the NFF secretariat early in the morning were kept guessing through out the day and were briefed around 10.30 pm only after concessions were allegedly made by the leadership of the NFF.