By Eddie Akalonu

Former Nigeria  Football Association Vice Chairman, Brigadier General Gregory Adebiyi has advised the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF egg-heads to stop dabbling into technical matters of the national team as it will conflict with Stephen Keshi’s job as head coach of the Super Eagles.

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He advised them to rather focus their energy on administrative matters that would ensure that Nigeria makes an appreciable campaign in the World Cup in Brazil next summer.

“We have picked a ticket to the World Cup and that is only one leg of the campaign. I think that the NFF should work out measures to guide and complement Keshi’s effort and they can begin by starting early to plan how to execute the rest of the campaign.

And I want to remind them that it includes paying the backlog of salaries, bonuses and allowances of the coaches they owe, pay attention to the players welfare such that we don’t allow the tournament to start before discussing or fixing what allowances they can earn in the competition.

More than that, the NFF should leave Keshi and his assistants to handle technical matters.  I have observed that some of their actions and utterances are diversionary. So they can maintain advisory and supervisory roles over him and the team,” he said.
Adebiyi, who was also technical committee chairman of the FA, stressed the need for the NFF to arrange for the Eagles to play friendly matches between now and June next year.

“Experience tells me that the Eagles should be made to play matches involving both tough teams and weak teams. It will make no sense if they play against tough teams during this preparation time and in the World Cup proper be beaten by so-called weak teams.

By this, I mean since we are meeting a team like Iran that is believed to be weak in the group stage, it will be good to have another game against Jordan or any country in that class to avoid getting a surprise during the competition,” he stressed.