Former Nigerian international Sam Sodje, says Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro, lacks sufficient technical know-how to manage the team to success in the coming AFCON.
The retired defender made the statement in an exclusive chat with our correspondent in his Warri country home, Delta State.
He said though the Portuguese has managed teams throughout Europe and truly knows football, he’s, however, not tactically sound and will need some help to grab laurels with the Nigerian team.
“We lack in technical sport; once we get the technical team that matches our ability, I think we will go all the way.
“I don’t think the current coach is technically sound enough. He knows football, but I think I know what it means to play for a national team in Nigeria.
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“You have to be sound technically and I think we’ve made too many mistakes technically and we are still making the mistakes now and that is the problem we have now, and he knows the problem.
“I’ve told him this before. I have said this many years that we need a different coach, until we get our act right at the back, we are not going to win anything.
“Not just the defence, but at the team. How do you get that, you need a defensive coach, 100 percent and he knows that; everyone that has played to the highest level knows that too,” Sodje who played for Nigeria between 2005 and 2010 noted.
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When prodded further on whether the Portuguese should be replaced with a better coach that can deliver, he said the NFF should do what it thought was right.
“That is up to the NFF; if I’m the NFF president, I will do what I think is right. I don’t think he has to be relieved, I just think we have to know what is right and wrong.
“When someone comes, we know if he is sound or not. I’m not going to tell the NFF what to do, but I think as a Nigerian National team, we are struggling technically,” he reiterated.
He, however, applauded the Super Eagles team for surviving the scare by the Sierra Leonean players last weekend during which Nigeria picked its ticket to the 2024 AFCON tournament.
“I’m very impressed we’ve got some big players. Before now, big players don’t play games on paper. We got some big players, the current players we have now, are very good players,” he admitted.