When Finidi George was promoted from Assistant Coach to Head Coach of our national team, the Super Eagles, the news was greeted with a muted let's see attitude.
This is not because he was not up to it. No one who had watched Finidi George as a player in the 1990s would doubt his remarkable skills. He was a brilliant winger who played in the first league teams in Europe in that era and was a critical part of Nigeria's national team that put the name of the country up on the world map. The Green Eagles of that era won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1994 and made decent appearances in the FIFA World Cup in 1994 and 1998.
He was also a successful coach, having taken Enyimba FC to win the Nigerian Premier League in 2023. He was part of the coaching crew that spurred the Super Eagles to the runner-up position in the Africa Cup of Nations 2023. A successful player and coach up till he took up the headship of the crew coaching the national team from his more successful boss, Jose Perseiro. His misfortune started manifesting at the home match when we hosted South Africa at the Uyo Stadium during the World Cup group qualifiers. A 1-1 draw was considered a poor outing for the Super Eagles who needed a win badly to make progress in the group. A few days after a 2-1 loss to a lowly-rated Benin Republic team must have been the last straw.
Having played four matches and the Super Eagles have not a single win, one can understand the frustration among officials of the NFF and the hand-wringing that went along. With the World Cup qualifiers already rather badly ongoing and the AFCON qualifiers due to start shortly, the realisation must have dawned upon the NFF that this is not the time to bury the head under the nationalistic sand but to go for the best from wherever. If Finidi George goes after this short tenure, he would blend into a multitude of celebrated players who failed to reach the next level of becoming distinguished coaches.
I recall two of them who were heroes on the field, who have tried their hands as coaches, but are yet to reach the same level of success. Readers might recall Thierry Henry, this millennium's most celebrated Arsenal player. He won two Premier League titles and three FA Cups with Arsenal and when he moved to Barcelona, the club clinched the Championship Cup that year, the La Liga title, and Copa del Rey. He retired in 2010 and has been trying his hand at coaching without success. His most spectacular failure was at Monaco FC which was handed over to him in 2012. Despite his emotional attachment to the club - he started playing there as a teenager - Henry did so poorly that the club had to dismiss him.
Similarly, his contemporary, Wayne Rooney, arguably the most outstanding English player in recent years, has had a corresponding woeful coaching fate. Rooney, one of the legends of Manchester United FC, is their record goal scorer of all time. During his long years with the club from 2004-2017, Manchester United won most of the trophies open to clubs of its peer group, Premier League, FA Cup, UEFA Championship, etc. Within that period, he also played for the England national team, becoming a permanent fixture of the team in all its outings. He was also the record goal-scorer for the team.
When Rooney resigned from the pitch, he also tried his hand at coaching with spectacular results of failure. He had a string of disastrous managerial outings here and there. His last charge last year at Birmingham City FC ended with the team relegated to the third tier. Rooney was sacked recently. Football insiders tell me that success on the pitch and success as a manager requires a different set of attributes. These attributes hardly converge on a person. Of course, there were exceptions. The case of the French player, Zinedine Zidane, stands out. Zidane is reputed to be one of the most outstanding players of all time as well as one of the most successful coaches also.
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He spent most of his career in Real Madrid FC and in that period the club won all the available trophies, including La Liga, UEFA Championship, etc. He was the captain of the French team when they won the FIFA World Cup 1998 as well as the Euro 2000. On retirement, Zidane went back to coach the Real Madrid FC and raised its profile to spectacular heights. The club won the La Liga title and also the Champions League three times in a row as well as many others. Here at home, we had Stephen Keshi who was the captain of Nigeria's Super Eagles when they won the Africa Cup of Nations Cup in 1994. He returned as the national coach and led the team to win the same cup in 2010.
As we bid farewell to George Finidi, we remind the NFF that all eyes are on them to give us a team manager of the Super Eagles who will take the team to the World Cup and AFCON. That's the least expectation of all Nigerians.
