Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Reading recently that Nigeria's new national team coach, Sunday Oliseh, will be primarily based in Europe came as a shock to me for several reasons. Conventionally, the primary residence of Nigeria's national team coach has always  been controversial, particularly when the appointee is someone without Nigerian citizenship. In fact, there has always been an insistence that the coach maintain primary residence in Nigeria and often a long-term accommodation for the coach becomes part of the contract. Often, a Nigerian-born appointee (such as Oliseh) is expected to reside in Nigeria and thus the issue is mute. Thus, it was a surprise to read that Oliseh will be resident in Europe. Of course, one could argue that most of Nigeria's internationals reside in Europe and, thus, it makes little sense for the national team coach to be based in Nigeria. That, of course, is a perfectly reasonable argument but only sustainable if Oliseh's charge was merely to coach the Nigerian nati...

The story below is directly from Nigerian Football Federation's (NFF) website and, thus, must be considered accurate. You can find the story by clicking on NFF . Reading the story leads me to the following interpretations: 1.      Sunday Oliseh’s job is far more reaching than had been the case with previous national team coaches. He will not only coach the A squad but will oversee Nigeria’s football by beginning the process of codifying it and outlining its culture. Essentially, he takes over a task that was supposedly Shuaibu Amodu’s. 2.      Pinnick did get his wish for a foreign technical imprint on Nigeria’s football.   In fact, not only did Pinnick get what many thought he was focused on but he got more! The designated Foreign Assistant is only such by name. In essence, that Assistant will have (by all intents and purposes) far reaching influence. He will oversee the entire youth development. My sense is that because those youth...

In spite of widespread knowledge of human behavior and an understanding of general systems, there remains a willingness to explain football results solely by the simplistic ideas that: "all results derive from coaching." This is misleading and retrogressive. It reeks of, perhaps, lazy analysis or simply an inability to deal with complexities and, thus, a willingness to chase the "simple route." In this brief piece, I do not focus on providing statistics to expose the fallacy of "all results derive from coaching." Instead, I assume that what we all understand in the statement "football is not mathematics" should open the window to the universal truth that football results expectedly feature "up and downs" and unpredictabilities, which are the crux of game's excitement. No coach has been able to buck that trend nor will there be a coach to do so. At best, a 'good' coach will provide a certain probability o...