By Eddie Akalonu

Alhaji Gara Gombe has advised 2008 Bejing Olympics silver winning coach Samson Siasia not to allow people  to drag him into taking up the Super Eagles job for now, saying the enabling environment that would make a coach function well does not exist yet due to the crisis in the NFA.

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Gombe, a former chairman of both the Gombe State Football Association and the state premier league team Gombe United FC, said, “Siasia must not rush into taking up the Eagles job because the working environment is not good enough to function even though I acknowledge his sudden appearance as  a candidate for the job is highly political.

I think  Siasia must not forget too soon how they unceremoniously dragged him into taking up the Flying Eagles job under very harsh  atmosphere and  soon after the team’s failure at the African Youth Championship in Egypt, those who who created the conditions for the team to fail turned their back on him.

“The environment now is in total mess with NFA in crisis and it will not be in Siasia’s interest to go for the job. If he does, he should be out for the worst because it’s his reputation  that is at stake. Siasia is just a step away from staining the record he has built in recent times  with this jump into the Eagles affairs. They will mess him up if he answers their call to handle Eagles”.

For the same Eagles job, Gombe said Swede Lars Lagerback, who recently turned down the offer to lead Nigeria after the World Cup, could  have been  given an extended  contract till the 2012 Nations Cup. “He was a coach of circumstance. We wasted money on Lagerback. Amodu  should have been allowed to continue and finish the good job he had started.

“There was nothing about him that should have informed his choice by our  football chiefs to handle the national team and our poor  performance in South Africa showed Lagerback was a failure despite the huge money  wasted on him. He was never better than Amodu.

We would have gotten better results if Amodu had handled the team at the World Cup, he added.” Asked why he wants the Swede to stay on a little more, Gombe said it would afford us see what he could do for our football if given more time, being a coach known for his record in developmental football.