NFF Appoints Paul Le Guen as the new Super Eagles Technical Adviser

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has confirmed the appointment of Frenchman, Paul Le Guen as the new Super Eagles head coach/Technical Adviser, subject to agreement on personal terms.

Member of the NFF Technical and Development Committee, Paul Bassey while addressing newsmen in Abuja on the development,  said Le Guen is to be assisted by Salisu Yusuf and Imama Amapakabo, with ex-international Alloy Agu to serve as goalkeeper’s trainer.

Paul Le Guen who served as former Cameroon and Oman coach, was selected ahead of Belgian tactician Tom Saintfiet and the erstwhile interim manager of the Super Eagles, Yusuf, who’ll now serve as head coach, Vanguard writes.

The new coaching crew will have an immediate task of navigating a tricky Russia 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying group that features former African champions Algeria, Cameroon and Zambia.

Meanwhile, NFF boss, Amaju Pinnick, said the decision to move swiftly in appointing a coach was informed by the failure to secure a ticket for Afcon 2017 and enormity of the task ahead as Nigeria’s participation at the coming Mundial is non-negotiable.

Pinnick further stated that his board has secured a partnership that will pay the salaries of five coaches so as to avoid the wrangling of the past.

“We want to avoid as much as possible the perceived mistakes that made us to miss out of the Afcon 2017. To ensure that we brought the best coach that can qualify us for the World Cup, the first thing we did was to ensure we got a partner that will pay the fees of all the coaches,” he said.

We sent a request of about five coaches and that was granted and the company requested we should keep every other thing under wraps for now.

After the last AFCON ouster, we started thinking of Russia ad we are making efforts to pay all the coaches so that they will give their best at all times. Truly we are very desirous of qualifying for the 2018 world cup”.