After an impressive start to his recent managerial reign as Super Eagles interim coach, Augustine Eguavoen seems to have won the hearts of many Nigerian football lovers.
In this piece, Completesports.com‘s AUGUSTINE AKHILOMEN highlights six reasons why Eguavoen should be handed the Super Eagles job on a permanent basis.
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Continuity with Eguavoen Will Bolster the Team
Continuity can have several positive impacts, especially with Eguavoen’s tactical consistency. The team can build on established tactics and strategies, leading to better performance as players become more familiar with the coach’s philosophy.
Also Read: 7 Nigerian Football Legends Who Placed 2nd Or 3rd In APOTY Race
Continuity will also allow Eguavoen to work with players over a longer period, fostering individual growth and better team chemistry.
After a poor start to their 2026 World Cup qualifiers, the Super Eagles, under the tutelage of interim coach Augustine Eguavoen, have found a new lease on life. Thrashing Benin 3-0 in Uyo and drawing 1-1 with Rwanda in Kigali in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, shows the need for continuity by giving Eguavoen the job on substantive basis.
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Fearlessness and Integrity in Team Selection
Unlike in the past, when players could stroll into the Super Eagles camp late and still command first-team spots, Eguavoen has deviated from this practice. He started Victor Boniface ahead of Victor Osimhen against Benin and Rwanda in the 2025 AFCON qualifiers.
This bold decision surprised many football fans and indicated that the team is moving in the right direction.
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Improving the Eagles’ Physicality and Pace
These are two areas where Eguavoen has made a positive impact, as the Super Eagles now play with more pace and impose their physical presence on opponents. In the past, the team was known for its slow approach to games, which often played into the hands of opponents. However, the current Super Eagles squad under Eguavoen has made significant improvements in this regard.
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More Trust in Indigenous Coaches and Home-based Players
After former coach George Finidi’s poor technical and tactical handling of the Super Eagles, many football lovers lost confidence in indigenous coaches.
However, Eguavoen’s appointment has renewed belief in giving local coaches a chance to prove their worth.
Also Read: 7 Major Talking Points From Super Eagles’ AFCON 2025 Qualifiers Vs Benin, Rwanda
Regardless of a player’s status, whether foreign-based or from the local league, there is confidence that Eguavoen’s tenure will open the door for Nigerian Professional Football League players to compete at the highest level.
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Boosting Super Eagles’ Team Confidence
Before Eguavoen’s arrival, the team lacked confidence and struggled to find its rhythm. His calm and soft-spoken approach has instilled self-belief in the Super Eagles, creating a friendly atmosphere among the players.
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Eagerness to Rewrite History with the Super Eagles
Eguavoen is driven by a desire to rewrite history with the Super Eagles after failing to guide the team to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The Black Stars of Ghana denied the Super Eagles a place at the mundial due to the away goal rule.
Given this, Eguavoen is determined to restore the team’s pride and reaffirm Nigeria’s status as the giant of African football.
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COMMENTS
All are valid points.
NFF, please, remove the interim tag soonest.
200 million Nigerians dribbled.
Why the delay in appointing Eguavoen, when he was their choice from the beginning?
We were hearing orisirisi names, from Chelle, to Saintfiet, to McLaren, to Renard, Lagbaja abi na Labbadia, Schaffer. Some were even talking about Patrick Vierra.
All na smokescreen. The skillful dribbling and dummy selling continued. Las Las, na dia man dem put there. In the “interim”, to start with. A win against Benin and draw against Rwanda, and he’s now permanently installed!
While I would have preferred us getting the best coach our money can buy, if it was always going to be Eguavoen, why the unnecessary delay? Why the lies, deceit and dummy selling?
No problem with having Egu there. But if he fails peren, him and those who hired him MUST GO!
He and NFF should stop accepting gifts and monies from unfit players and start inviting players like Cyriel Dessers, Chuba Akpom.players with good goal ratio!
Cyriel Dessers? Who be dat? omo dis guy if you nor get anyting to do stop yaning nonsense arand- ahah nor be only Cyriel Dessers nah Sahara Desserts – siddon dere dey play! nonsense
plaese helep we tell kel say mek hin no show hin face arand here agen!? rubbish!
You don’t need to know about him. How long shall we continue to invite unfit players this is why Nigeria is not growing like other nations. When mediocrity is on the high excellence is being relegated.
Kenny he’s not a Nigerian avoid the clown. He is back from exile to start causing confusion by ridiculing our players. These Ghanaians will never leave us alone!
Selfmade don craze comeback again.
6 Reasons Eguavoen DOES NOT Deserve Permanent Super Eagles Head Coach Job:
1. Continuity is a remembrance of the Ghana debacle. Staying put after 2 matches since the Qatar failure is a reward for incompetence on a NATIONAL TEAM. Teaching an old dog new tricks is futile.
2. NO LOCAL COACH is fearless and has integrity in team selection. Who picks the squad? Them? Nope. Who is bribe-centric? Local coaches. It was “audible to the blind” and “visible to the deaf” that Osimhen was unfit to start a crucial AFCON qualifiers match after zero pre season. Nothing special. More influential players gave way to bench warmers in previous list. So? Integrity fire!
3. Nothing special about imposing physicality on 2 very lowly ranked African teams. Falconets used the same physicality to bounce out of the just concluded under 20 women’s world cup. Brawns don’t play football, only brains. Physicality is old school and I dare him to try it on the top 15 African teams.
4. Trust in indigenous coaches, especially Nigerians, is a fantastic booby trap. When have they gone on refresher courses on modern game techniques by themselves? It is impossible to use the curriculum of 4 years ago to adequately prepare for an exam today. What revolutionary tactics does Eguavoen know? Against savvy teams, can he who went into hiding since early 2022 misery pull off surprises after non activity all the while or is he gonna rely on the so-called talent we have to bail him out? Football today is beyond a pool of talent.
Home based players in eagles even frighten me. The thought they’d slip into the team when they are never fantastic at home or on the continent is a downhill path.
5. Boosting confidence of a team that was a finalist in African premier soccer competition is bullocks. Lookman has APOTY award to dream of so creating an impression on voting public minds was paramount. He was even our most lively player on the pitch in those matches. Others already have their slots in the team so bench warmers, late comers etc were tolerated. Where was the confidence? Beating Benin Republic? Nonsense.
Libya is taking us back to artificial pitch again after Rwanda draw. Is it confidence to find an antidote to playing on such turf? As long as non performing players make the team list ahead of more deserving players, confidence is a byword.
6. 4th stint on the same job, to me, means “not a big deal, nothing to prove, nothing challenging”. That’s very unfortunate. Idling by for national team job after failing at it and running it aground, only 24 months ago shows one thing: the “hiring company” is tactless, thoughtless, zombied, unprincipled, flawed, dead brained and direction less.
NFF is grossly incompetent for grading a serial loser fit for the same position they flunked not once or twice but three freaking times. This frog does not have eggs anymore.
Is he the local coach (why glasshouse is saving money that is not their father’s money to get a quality coach baffles me) that exists in the whole of Nigeria?
Again, when this plan ultimately backfires, I hope glasshouse will bite the dust as well. May this NFF tenure be swiftly shortened and this needless affliction not arise a second time in Nigeria football.
Other well managed civilized nations fired and hired coaches swiftly. Nigeria on the other hand are dancing in circles. Tufiakwa.
This whole coaching matter has not been handled well by the NFF.
For me, the only manageable aspect of keeping Eguavoen are his backroom staff. Capable local coaches Fidelis Ilechukwu, Daniel Ogunmodede, Olatunji Baruwa, and foreign Fitness Trainer Tomaz Zorec seem a capable bunch.
Between them they should be able to rise up to the challenges ahead.
But I have my doubts though.
I don’t think we should be thinking about giving Egu the job on just the paltry evidence of 2 games – 1 win and 1 draw, there’s nothing special there. Let him win the next 5-7 games and then we can start seriously considering him for the job – for now we must continue sounding out capable managers around the world whether black, white, blue or red, and let Egu continue holding the forte, as someone said, do not let them say he is no longet the Technical Director because if you people open that door for them, they will just quickly put another aboki there and that will be that!
If he can win the next 5 for starters, then and only then can we even begin to entertain the thought!
PS – Whatever happens, please let’s try a cheeky call back up to Victor Moses, he’ll be a very strong option for us coming off the bench, and I have no doubt he’ll probably still displace the likes of Chuks or Iwobi even at his age! – He just scored a beautiful goal for Luton, so reminiscent of his younger days. It’s like they say – class is permanent, he may have lost some pace and his legs may not be as strong as they were ten years ago but he still has a wand of a left foot and a high level of football intelligence. Ose!
NFF continuing in their tradition of RECYCLING MEDIOCRITY.
YET AGAIN!!!
The money to get the best coach is available, yet they prefer to cut corners. We have been cutting corners for decades, WHERE HAS THIS LANDED US? A plethora of missed opportunities. Trophies that could have been bagged are lost for good, tournaments we could have qualified for, we failed to qualify. With better, tactically superior coaches, Nigeria would have a lot more than just 3 AFCON trophies to show today.
Nigeria could have gotten a draw against Argentina at the 2018 world cup, and moved on to the next round. We could have even won that game. We ended up losing and getting bundled out.
Rohr tried his best, but ideally, if NFF were serious, we could have obtained a coach that was better grounded tactics wise.
Cast your mind back to 1994. Tactical blunders eventually led Nigeria to lose a completely winnable game against Italy, and thus we lost a golden opportunity to become the first African side to qualify for a world cup quarter final. We perhaps lost even more at that tournament, because that team was good enough to go all the way to the WORLD CUP FINAL itself. After beating Italy, we would have met teams like Bulgaria and Spain, and beaten them. And who knows what would have happened in the final. Yes, our opponent would have been a very formidable Brazil side, led by their deadly forwards Romario and Bebeto. But then, we might have found a way to beat them, and BECOME AFRICA’S FIRST EVER WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS.
All that opportunity was lost because NFF would not spend the money to get us a coach that can get the job done.
Terrible losses and disappointments over the years has been the direct result of NFF’s cutting corners. And yet, NFF ONIGBESE keep repeating the same tired mistakes.
Who do us like this?
Here we go again. Once again, as usual, we have a squad of players that are good enough to achieve big things. But NFF once again have chosen to go the cheap, easy route. They have chosen the path of least resistance, instead of putting in the work and investing the funds to get the best coach possible.
This your submission is weak with a lame duck. Nigeria has grown above this your childish gibberish. NFF should go for a good foreign coach for the super Eagles. Eguavon lacks the quality to coach Super Eagles on a permanent basis. The Ghana failure is still very fresh in our memories. Enough if this your early morning ejaculation. Globally football has gone beyond this your indigenous hypocrisy and hype. Enough said.
This matter still dey ground……..?
Meanwhile, the next of the Super Eagles fixtures is a double header against Libya on October 6 and 14. The venue is still the Godswill Akpabio Stadium, Uyo for the former leg and Tripoli Stadium, Tripoli for the latter.
Considering the above and knowing well that Coach Austine Eguavoen has got just 8 days to prepare the boys for Akpabio-Uyo, who and who is match fit for these encounters? I think the press should focus more on how to play these game beaming their lights on SE players wherever they abode.
On what the NFF will do concerning the SE top job is to allow Eguaveon and his team of local assistants to continue at least for the next 4 years. The truth is that if Coach Rohr could spend 5yrs on SE, then his bester, Egu Should get a 6yr appointment but I sincerely think a 4yr is ok.
Sense full your comment, ojarie. Eguavoen deservers more tine to thus 2 weeks interim NONSENSE. NFF, mse una do the needful to avoid further delay.
Was The NFF Right To Retain Austin Eguavoen as Super Eagles Interim Head Coach?
The decision by the NFF in the last week to retain Austin Eguavoen in the role of Interim Head Coach of the Super Eagles has become a cause-célèbre among fans and various stakeholders.
Fans feel shortchanged that the highly publicized but ultimately fruitless and protracted plan of the NFF to engage the services of a highly qualified high profile expatriate coach over many months led to the installation of unpopular Eguavoen, albeit on a temporary basis: the wounds of Eguavoen’s recent failed Afcon and World Cup qualification campaigns left terrible scars.
It has to be sounded out that a healthy throng of Super Eagles fans welcome Eguavoen’s continuation and even clamour for his announcement as the permanent coach and solution. These fans have their reasons, chief of which (I think) the desire to have a Nigerian in the Super Eagles dugout instead of a journeyman white coach whose greatest credential is being white.
For me, this whole coaching matter has been utterly botched embarrassingly by the inept NFF. For crying out loud, it should not be an expedition to Pluto and Mars for a credible Football Federation to land a credible coach for the Super Eagles.
As we are where we are, the only manageable aspect of keeping Eguavoen are his backroom staff. Capable local coaches Fidelis Ilechukwu, Daniel Ogunmodede, Olatunji Baruwa, and foreign Fitness Trainer Tomaz Zorec seem a capable bunch.
Between them they should be able to rise up to the challenges ahead as they did by bruising Benin and repressing Rwanda in September’s Afcon qualifiers.
But I have huge reservations though due to Eguavoen’s proclivity to run out of tactical juice and ideas in crucial periods thereby falling on his tactical arse; and tendency of his Super Eagles to exhibit defective attention to tactical details the longer Eguavoen stays in post.
Hopefully this time around, things will be technically handled differently with more sustainable positive outcomes if he has truly learnt lessons from recent mishaps from his missteps.
Since Westerhoff and Bonferre we have not had dreadful Super Eagles. Indigenous coaches have a long way to go in terms of technical and tactical proficiency. Until they have those capabilities, we will always struggle playing against North Americans and South Africa. We beat these teams on their bad days whereas we have quality players that can win top-notch matches.
The coaches and NFF apologists may not like this fact, but time always vindicate unbiased critics.