Pinnick: Keshi’s re-appointment not a mistake

Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President, Amaju Pinnick, has reiterated that the Federation made no mistake in re-appointing Stephen Keshi as Super Eagles’ Head Coach.
The NFF boss said that “a Keshi with enhanced capacity, working together with a Technical Study Group headed by former Nigerian Captain, Austin ‘Jay-Jay’ Okocha, and with the benefit of the world-renowned ProZone match preparation software would, in aggregate, be better than any foreign coach.
“We made no mistake in re-appointing Keshi. In his first term, Keshi did a lot to encourage the boys in the domestic League, and the boy who scored our winning goal at the Africa Cup of Nations, Sunday Mba, was playing in the domestic scene.
“We don’t live in the clouds. If we wanted a foreign coach, we would probably go for someone in the class of Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger. We don’t have that money presently and we don’t want to owe our coach.”
Pinnick said the ProZone software, for which four NFF officials are currently in the United Kingdom for special training, will be of great help to Nigeria’s national teams.
“In the past, we played matches blindly. We didn’t know enough about our opponents and we didn’t even know enough about our own players – their strengths and weaknesses. If we had the ProZone match preparation software before now, we probably would have beaten France and reached the quarter finals of last year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.”
The NFF President also revealed that capacity-enhancing programmes have been lined up for Keshi.
“Our vision is to see the Super Eagles reach the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals in Russia. We are very positive and we will work hard towards that.”