World Cup Failure: NFF, Tech Committee to meet with Coach Chelle on Monday

Pius Ayinor

The Executive Board Members of the Nigeria Football Federation and the Technical Committee members are scheduled to have a deep meeting with the Super Eagles coach, Eric Chelle on Monday, December 1 in Abuja.

A member of the NFF hierarchy who confirmed the meeting to Extrasportnigeria.com said the face-to-face roundtable discussion had become very urgent following Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup and the African Nations Cup competition starting in December.

He said, “Phone call or a Zoom Conference won’t be the best platform for this kind of meeting; we need to meet physically to talk without any form of distractions. We have move out from where we have found ourselves. AFCON is close by but more importantly the years ahead.”

It was learnt that the major focus would be on how to rebuild the Super Eagles going forward. The undertone is to do proper search “for much younger and hungry players” who can compete with the current squad especially the ones that have stayed long in the team. It is believed that some of the current members of the Eagles squad have continued to show lackadaisical attitude especially when they are called to camp as there is hardly a good level of competition for positions as the team is currently constituted.

There is also the concern about how players conduct themselves in camp. Many members feel that the advent of the social media is affecting team discipline and focus with many of the players eager to appear on Instagram and X (twitter) more than focusing on getting the team to deliver.

“We have to tell ourselves the plain truth. Our players cannot be doing things they know they can’t do with their clubs. The same level of discipline must be applied here. When they are on vacation they take along influencers to video them a million times and not when they are in Uyo,” he added.