JOSE Peseiro had a quiet career as a player and he went on to coach several clubs around the world under short tenures. His most impressive experience was taking Sporting CP to the 2005 UEFA Cup Final. He has now been announced as the Nigerian national team coach who is expected to lead the team to Qatar 2022 World Cup immediately after Augustine Eguavoen’s team competes at AFCON 2021 in Cameroon.
It seemed sensational to many that the NFF contacted the likes of Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger to nominate candidates for the Eagles coach role. But now that Mourinho’s compadre has been given the job, we dig into Jose Peseiro’s long managerial career and we have reasons to worry.
Our newly appointed 61-year-old head coach began his coaching career way back in 1992 at amateur Portuguese club, União Desportiva de Santarém. He then moved to two other amateur sides within six years before becoming Nacional coach in 1999.
Throughout his coaching experience, Peseiro barely sits still. He has been described as a journeyman since he stays at clubs for as little as 5 months before considering a new job or getting sacked. Managing clubs and national teams from Asia, South America, and Africa; the Super Eagles role will be Peseiro’s second job in Africa. In short, he’s short of experience coaching an African side —plus with no much success.
It seems Amaju Pinnick and his folks at the NFF only nodded to Mourinho’s recommendation due to blind respect and ignorance of the candidate’s history. Peseiro spent his longest time on a job at the club Nacional. After spending four seasons at the Portuguese side, and helping them into the Primera division by the way, Peseiro left Nacional for Real Madrid in 2003 to serve as assistant coach to Carlos Queiroz.
Jose Peseiro and Carlos Queiroz were sent packing just after a year due to poor results. Things went downhill and he stayed without a job for almost a year. Peseiro then found a new role at Al-Hilal club in Saudi Arabia before he proceeded to Greek side Panathinaikos. Then he got sacked after Olympiakos humiliated Panathinaikos 4-0 in the Greek Cup finals. Got a job at Romanian side, Rapid Bucharest in February 2009, spent less than a year with poor performances, and got the sack. Became coach of the Saudi Arabia national team, failed to qualify the Green Falcons to the 2010 World Cup, then got the sack again.
Our coach then returned to Portugal to manage Braga. He guided the underachieving Braga team to their second-ever European competition but reached a mutual agreement to end his contract at the end of the 2012/13 season.
As though Jose Peseiro had an itch once he stayed on a job for a year, he returned to Asia to coach Al Wadah but his stay eventually ended in about a year too. In October 2015, Jose Peseiro had the opportunity to coach the most successful African club, Al Ahly. Peseiro spent just 101 days on the job in Egypt when Al Ahly decided to sack him due to his inability to withstand pressure. He would immediately join FC Porto a few days later in January 2016. The sack caught up with him again, just barely six months at Porto, after losing nine of his 22 games. He returned to Braga and got fired again six months after.
Jose’s sack odyssey continued. He joined Sharjah 16 days after Braga relieved him of his duties. A terrible run with only two wins in 17 games soon got him sacked again. Peseiro then went back home to Portugal where he coached Vitoria Guimaraes in 2018. He then left the club on mutual agreement to manage Sporting CP in mid-2018, only to be sacked after 123 days.
Jose Peseiro’s last job came in February 2020, he got appointed as head coach of Venezuela. However, his one and half year stay was yet another abysmal term where he won just one of his ten games and lost six. It is on the back of this history that the NFF asked him to take the job to coach the Super Eagles.
Peseiro’s record is frighteningly flawed, it is like a book of scripted failure. We can only believe that he gets the thumbs-up because he is “friends with” Mourinho. Unfortunately, Peseiro and Mourinho are nothing alike. His style of play has produced recurrent failure only matched by Sisyphus. Four trophies in 29 years and about a dozen terminations of contract is nowhere to go for the Super Eagles if we really want to compete against Egypt and Algeria for a spot in the World Cup.
Nigeria does not want a friend of a great tactician. We want a great tactician. If the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, can accept Peseiro despite such a holed-up CV, it should not be so optimistic about what this head coach can offer.
