The president of the Nigeria Football Federation, Ibrahim Gusau, has confirmed that the newly appointed Super Eagles coach, Eric Chelle, will arrive in Ikenne, Ogun State, today, Tuesday, to begin overseeing the Super Eagles B team.
The team is currently preparing for the 2024 African Nations Championship set to take place across Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.
Scheduled from February 1-28, the CHAN tournament will see Nigeria aiming to clinch their first title in the competition. Chelle, who was officially unveiled at a brief ceremony on Monday at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, assumes his duties one week after being announced as the 37th coach of the Super Eagles.
His immediate task is to supervise the Super Eagles B squad, which has been under the management of Remo Stars coach Daniel Ogunmodede and Fidelis Ilechukwu of Rangers International.
“Eric is coming with three assistants that will work with him. By the grace of God, he will be in Ikenne on Tuesday to be with the CHAN Eagles,” Gusau said during the unveiling.
“He is going to be with the CHAN team in a supervisory role. He is not the one that selected the players but we mandated him to be part of the team and give them the support and from there he can watch them and see how some of the players can make the Super Eagles too.”
The former Mali coach will collaborate with his three assistants, alongside Ogunmodede and Ilechukwu.
Gusau emphasized the importance of integrating local expertise into Chelle’s team to ensure seamless collaboration and better understanding of Nigerian football culture.
“We have some other coaches that have been working that are going to be part of him. We need to inject our people to make sure they have a good interaction to see how they can support him and make sure he understands the mentality of Nigerian football,” Gusau added.
Under the leadership of Ogunmodede and Ilechukwu, Nigeria qualified for the CHAN tournament by defeating Ghana 3-1 on aggregate. Despite reaching the final in 2018 and finishing third in 2014, Nigeria is yet to claim the CHAN title.
