Learn from Eguavoen's mistakes, Esu cautions coaches

FORMER coach of Crown of Ogbomosho, Godfrey Esu, has charged other national teams' coaches to learn from the fall of Olympic Eagles' coach, Austin Eguavoen.Eguavoen's national U-23 team failed to pick a London 2012 Olympic Games ticket at the maiden African U-23 championship in Morocco after losing to Morocco and Senegal. The Super Eagles former coach, who won a game against Algeria, has tendered his resignation letter to his employer, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).Esu told SuperSport.com that Eguavoen failed in his assignment due to heavy reliance on foreign-based players and advised others to build their teams around the home-based players. He said: 'Sole dependence on foreign-based players ruined him and it is a big lesson to others.'It's a lesson to the Super Eagles' new manager, Stephen Keshi, to have a standby team built around the local players. With a solid local team in place a coach can always add flesh to his team with few foreign-based players. Even when they didn't show up for one reason or another, it will not weaken the entire team.'Esu, however, commended the Nigerian former international for resigning, as 'it is a honourable thing to do; it showed that there are Nigerian coaches who are still honourable. It's better than wait to be disgraced. Let him look for another job, mainly in the domestic league.'On how to avert the spate of failures in future, the veteran coach said that Nigeria should do thorough soul searching. He added: 'We have to sit down and reflect on how we have been doing things in the past.'Have we been cutting corners to achieve those successes, using over-aged players for under-aged competitions' We have to look ourselves in the face and tell the truth as it is.
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