BY JACOB AJOM

Former Nigeria international and Super Eagles goalkeeper trainer, Coach Joe Erico has said Nigerians should see the failure of all the national teams to qualify for major international championships in 2011 as a pointer to the visionless regime that had characterized the country’s football for some time now.

“What happened in 2011 shows that nothing was going on. We did not plan and there was no definite direction for football in the country,” Erico told Metrosports, Wednesday.

NFF boss, Aminu Maigari

Nonetheless, the former sweat merchant of the defunct NEPA FC counseled the Nigeria Football Federation to view the failure of the teams as a lesson for better planning and implementation of well articulated programmes.

“In life, you win some and lose some,” Erico said, adding, “The situation now calls for us to go back to the drawing board, look at where we went wrong and see what we can do to rectify the situation.”

Erico said 2011 failure should serve enough ingredients for growth. “We must take the positives and grow from there. Everybody is now calling for the return to grassroots. There must be something fundamentally wrong. Whoever fails to plan is planning to fail; exactly what we witnessed in 2011,” the coach said.