Pinnick, who spoke BBC’s Focus on Africa programme, explained that Keshi, in his first spell as the Eagles coach did a lot to make the local league highly competitive by giving the home grown players equal chance alongside their foreign-based counterparts in the national team.
The former Delta FA chairman also revealed that Stephen Keshi will produce a better result if he's able to work well with a Technical Study Group headed by former Nigeria captain Jay –Jay Okocha and with the benefit of the world –renowned Pro-Zone match preparation software would, in aggregate, be better than any foreign Coach.
“We made no mistake in re-appointing Keshi. In his first term, Keshi did a lot to encourage the boys in the domestic League, and the boy who scored our winning goal at the Africa Cup of Nations, Sunday Mba, was playing in the domestic scene.
“We don’t live in the clouds. If we wanted a foreign Coach, we would probably go for someone in the class of Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger. We don’t have that money presently and we don’t want to be owing our Coach.”
Pinnick said the ProZone software, for which four NFF officials are currently in the United Kingdom for special training, will be of great help to the Nigeria National Teams.
“In the past, we played matches blindly. We didn’t know enough about our opponents and we didn’t even know enough about our own players – their strengths and weaknesses. If we had the ProZone match preparation software before now, we probably would have beaten France and reached the quarter finals of last year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.”
The NFF President also revealed that capacity –enhancing programmes have been lined up for Coach Keshi, who is the only man alive to have won the Africa Cup of Nations as a player and as a Coach, and captained the Nigeria senior team for 11 years.
“Our vision is to see the Super Eagles reach the semi finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals in Russia. We are very positive and we will work hard towards that.” NFF
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