NFF Contacted Mourinho For Super Eagles Job – Pinnick

President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, on Wednesday, disclosed that the NFF contacted Roma manager, Jose Mourinho, to take over as Super Eagles coach.

Pinnick while speaking with sports journalists in Lagos said the National team would get a new coach within the next week or thereabout.

This means the interim coach of the Super Eagles, Austin Eguavoen might not take the team to the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, which begins January 9, 2022, in Cameroon.

Eguavoen was appointed by the NFF following the removal of Gernot Rohr as the coach of the Nigeria national team.

According to Pinnick, they have held talks with Serbian Mladen Krstajic and Jose Mourinho in their bid to get a top-class coach for the national team.

He further stated 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 said, “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, however, did not reveal that coach that will lead the Eagles at the AFCON but hinted that the new coach would waste no time when he is appointed.

He added, “If the coach will give us the Nations Cup, he will be drafted in immediately. I am not going to tell you that it will be later, because of what essence is the recruitment? If the executive committee says yes and we are ready, what are we waiting for?

“When I spoke with one of the coaches on Tuesday, he was already scouting our players and was telling me things I didn't even know about our players. It was quite impressive and he told me the strength of each player and he took me off guard. We are not going to experiment and if he can win the Nations Cup, no problem.

“We know Eguavoen can do it, but we also want someone who can do it better. If we are unable to sign him soon, then we will work with the current team. But I am not going to tell you that if we have him signed today, he is not going to lead the team to the AFCON.”

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