Sunday Oliseh, in an interview this week, has expressed interest in returning to work as Super Eagles coach.
“Right now, what I can say is that I am going to put my wildcard on this question,” he told Channels Television Sports when asked about the subject.
“As I have also often said, if Nigeria needs my services, I will
always help my country if
the right conditions are met.”
Nigerians would, given how Oliseh’s first spell went, receive those comments with mixed feelings.
Oliseh, a one-time Olympic gold medallist, was first appointed in July 2015, at a time not many felt he was a right fit, especially given his relative inexperience.
He’d only briefly managed one team – Belgian lower-league side Vervietois – prior to his being named Super Eagles boss, and that was deemed by critics as inadequate preparation for taking one of the biggest managerial jobs in African, if not world, football.
Decent results, destructive temperament
By the time Oliseh vacated the office, though, he’d delivered enough – just two of 14 games lost, 19 goals scored and six conceded – to make those who doubted his aptitude on the basis of experience eat much of their words.
Those whom Oliseh failed to silence, however, were the detractors that, from the off, predicted that the former Borussia Dortmund man’s attitude – notoriously fiery from his days as a player – wasn’t going to see him last very long in the job.
There were claims that Oliseh's reign would be not only stunningly short but shockingly spicy, too. And that’s just how things played out.
Oliseh probably spent as much time starting fires as he did in putting his team together. He dropped three of Nigeria’s biggest foreign-based stars – Victor Moses, Odion Ighalo, and Mikel Obi – in naming his very first squad.
When that was called out by the media and the public, Oliseh made it quite clear he didn’t want to his era to “start with controversies.”
He’d, however, end with a big one. Together with the Super Eagles proper, Oliseh also had managerial responsibility for the home-based Nigeria team, whom he qualified for the 2016 African Nations Championship (CHAN) in Rwanda.
But a single win out of three at the finals saw Nigeria eliminated at the first hurdle, and while Oliseh wasn’t critical of his charges afterwards, he made no secret just who he was holding accountable for that underwhelming outing.
“Personally, I’m very proud of the boys, they have given a good image.” “This is an adult tournament and there are certain things which must be present if you want to go far and win the tournament, and that is what my players see is existing in other teams that we don’t have in our team.”
Oliseh versus the NFF
Oliseh, quite clearly, had the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) in his crosshairs, and such bluntly expressed concerns, however legitimate, never went down well with his employers.
But before that storm was over, Oliseh stirred up another, this time aiming at a broader group – literally anyone who’d called his future into question after the aforementioned CHAN debacle.
“I want to speak on the insanity that has befallen some of our national team critics,”Oliseh, on YouTube, raged. “I call it ‘insanity’ because you must be insane to start seeking a plebiscite on the future of the national team coach of Nigeria because we lost the CHAN.”
That was a whole new low, one that drained any goodwill he enjoyed with the Nigerian public and strained further his already fraught relationship with the NFF – who’d fine him heavily for that rant – despite Oliseh’s expression of contrition over that unsavoury episode.
Mere weeks later, just eight months into his three-year contract, he decided the job wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.
Super Eagles coach: Entrusting the Future to the Past?
It’s been eight years already, and the Nigeria senior team has been through the hands of nearly as many head coaches (serving in either substantive or interim capacities), but the consequences of arguably the single biggest decision Oliseh took during his short-lived stint – stripping veteran Vincent Enyeama of the captaincy, favouring instead a young Ahmed Musa – have endured.
“I want a captain who is disciplined; a leader who can motivate other players; a player who comes to camp early. I want a young player not a retiring player as captain. And Ahmed Musa is that player. He is my captain,” Oliseh told Brila FM at the time, explaining the unpopular switch in the team’s leadership.
Musa is no longer that player. He still is captain and a model professional, but the 31- year-old is no spring chicken. If Oliseh should get the job again, it would be interesting to see whether he applies the same standards Enyeama found himself measured and disapproved by.
It’s also worth noting that Nigeria, following Enyeama’s demotion and subsequent retirement, have struggled to find hands as safe as his – a predicament that, hopefully, Jose Peseiro ended with the inspired choice of Stanley Nwabali in goal at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON 2024).
It is, in fact, a very different Nigeria team the now-departed Peseiro’s successor would inherit, relative to the one Oliseh left behind all those years ago.
There is a lot to work with, and the prospects are bright, especially after an AFCON tournament that almost yielded a fourth continental title.
The NFF would need the right man, though, and if they find it palatable to re-hire Oliseh – whose fine technical brain is employed even by FIFA every now and then – they’d want to ensure not just that ‘the right conditions are met', as the former Nigeria captain demands, but also that they’d have a better grip on his temperament.
