Coaches of South African teams don’t have it easy, but coaching Nigeria’s Super Eagles is even harder
SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi
PERHAPS there are more difficult assignments than coaching the Nigerian national football team. Swimming a crocodile-infested river or walking blindfolded across a minefield spring to mind, but the list is pretty short.
So when former Kaizer Chiefs coach Philippe Troussier gazed skywards after accepting the R45 000-a-month post as manager of the star-studded Super Eagles, he was surely seeking divine inspiration. If goalkeepers are crazy, what can one make of coaches, with the South African variety in danger of becoming extinct as success-obsessed club officials hire and fire with gay abandon and spectators bay for blood at the slightest excuse.
Troussier may be crazy, but he is also extremely brave because the post he has accepted is fraught with dangers, including government interference at the highest level and financial promises that are not kept. Dutchman Clemens Westerhof (a notable casualty amid the South African coaching mayhem of recent years) survived longer than most in the hottest seat in Africa, guiding Nigeria to victory in the 1994 African Nations Cup. He also took the Super Eagles to the 1994 World Cup in the United States, where they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against Italy, conceding a last-minute equaliser and an extra-time penalty kick, which the Divine Ponytailed Roberto Baggio converted.
Westerhof never returned to Nigeria, with physical threats from some players left out of the starting line-up probably influencing his decision to terminate a largely successful five-year reign. Local Amodu Shaibu took charge only for the Eagles to slip from their lofty pedestal and when the inevitable search for another foreign coach was concluded, Dutchman Jo Bonfrere got the nod. Although Bonfrere was not a big name in the coaching world, he had worked for several years under Westerhof and quickly turned the tide, bringing the Afro-Asian Nations Cup to Lagos.
A political quarrel with South Africa, triggered by the hanging of nine minority rights activists in Port Harcourt, deprived Bonfrere of a chance to emulate Westerhof in the Nations Cup as the Eagles refused to defend the title in Durban.
Bonfrere quit soon after, dissatisfied with his financial rewards and disillusioned with constant interference from various levels of authority, including the right honourable minister of sport. The lure of leading Nigeria at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics proved too strong, however, and Bonfrere returned to mastermind victory over Argentina in a thrilling final, and a place among the football records as the first African gold medallists.
Instead of returning to West Africa as a national hero, Bonfrere adjusted his sights to the dollar-saturated Middle East and landed a post as national coach of lightweight football nation Qatar. Shaibu was back in charge when the qualifying campaign for the 1998 World Cup began with an unimpressive 2-0 home victory over Burkina Faso and a 1-1 draw in Kenya merely confirmed that the end was nigh.
Nigerian football officials wanted a big name with Kevin Keegan and Johan Cruyff topping a list which read like a Who’s Who of international coaching. However, idealism was soon replaced by realism. It came down to a fight between two Frenchmen experienced in African football, Troussier and Claude le Roy, German Buckhardt Ziese, who had coached Ghana, and Hungarian Kalman Meszoly.
Ziese was rated highest by the Nigerian Football Association technical committee and the interview panel, but Troussier got the job because he was active in Africa with Moroccan second division club Fath Union Sportive. The boyish-looking Frenchman with medium-length brown hair probably ranks beside German Reinhard Fabisch as the best foreign coaches to work in South Africa this decade.
Troussier left Chiefs in late 1994 because some players complained of his demanding style. Before arriving in Johannesburg, the “White Wizard” had coached ASEC and the national team in the Ivory Coast. Now he has accepted what many cynics would consider the poisoned chalice of African football. “With 100 million people and God backing me, I pledge to take Nigeria to France,” he says.
His first competitive assignment comes on April 5 at home to group pace-setters Guinea and anything other than victory is unthinkable for a man with much to gain and even more to lose.