Tom Saintfiet
Belgian football coach Tom Saintfiet identifies the Super Eagles coaching job as one of his dream jobs npflupdates.com reports.
Saintfiet has in the past applied for the Super Eagles coaching job, but wasn’t hired by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), reasons not publicly made available.
According to the former Namibia national team head coach, it’s always his dream to work with the best teams in any terrain he finds himself.
Also read: Pitso Mosimane : Talents Alone Cannot Win Nigeria The 2023 AFCON
Saintfiet in an interview with the PUNCH argued that the Super Eagles already has the talents(available), abilities and arsenals to execute the AFCON and world cup tournament, but needed a great coaching strategy.
What Tom Saintfiet said about coaching the Super Eagles of Nigeria
“To be honest, it was always my dream and it is always my dream to work with the Super Eagles. For me, they are probably the strongest football nation in Africa with so much quality in the local league and in Europe. What Morocco did, Nigeria could have done many times, reaching the semi-finals and even more at the World Cup. If they had the right coaching strategy and right tactics, they would have achieved that. That’s the reason I was interested in the Nigerian job in 2010, in 2014 and 2018 but it didn’t come and hopefully, it happens in the future,” he said.
“It’s always a dream and I’m convinced I’m the coach who can guide Nigeria to that exceptional success both at the AFCON and the World Cup.”
Also read: Pitso Mosimane : Nigeria’s Super Eagles Is Unbelievable Ahead Of AFCON
Speaking further, Mr Saintfiet expressed his desire to be at a FIFA world cup tournament; probably becoming first foreign coach to lead an African country to a world cup semi-final.
“As a coach, I have the ambition to work with the best countries on the biggest stages. I want to go to the World Cup, I always said I want to be the first coach who guides an African team to the semi-final. Walid Regragrui did that already with Morocco and I’m convinced I could have done it in 2018 with Nigeria and maybe in 2022 because Cameroon and Tunisia were interested but they went with a local coach,” continued.
Also read: Gambia Coach Tom Saintfiet Declares Interest In The Super Eagles
He concluded that, “It’s a huge disappointment because it will be a huge honour to guide a nation like Nigeria. I know Nigerians can’t be happy with the (Eagles) performances in the last AFCON and World Cup, and even not qualifying is not the level of Nigeria.”
