Siasia
Nigeria
caretaker coach, Samson Siasia has said there are only a handful of
black coaches working in Europe because the clubs there do not believe
in them.
Siasia has been reappointed Nigeria coach in an interim capacity in the wake of the shock resignation of Sunday Oliseh recently.
He first coached Nigeria’s Super Eagles
in 2010, before he was fired the following year after he failed to
qualify the country to the 2012 AFCON in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
Before getting his coaching badges in
the United States of America and Europe, he played for French club,
Nantes as well as Lokeren in Belgium. He also featured at the 1994 World
Cup in the USA when Nigeria made a long-awaited debut.
Siasia has now said European clubs are guilty of not giving black coaches a chance.
“I want to believe that the reason that
there are not many black coaches working in Europe is because the
European clubs hardly give us a chance and they do not believe in us,”
said the coach, who was severally linked with jobs abroad.
“Many of us have not only played at the
highest level in Europe, but have excelled, but even when we get our
coaching badges there, these clubs still don’t give us the break we need
to show what we can do outside the pitch.
“We have many ex-African players with
French nationality, but I can only recall (Claude) Makalele who was at
Bastia and that was it. Where is John Barnes with all he achieved at
Liverpool and even though he grew up in England and played for that
country? He was not given much of a chance there as a coach.
“Where is another black coach, Chris
Houghton? Where is he now? Many of us have good records as players and
then coaches, but because the European clubs do not believe in us, we
end up having to do something else. And even where they give us a
chance, they are quick to dispense with us.
“Something is really not right, but I don’t want to put any name to it.”
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