The coach of the Nigeria U23 team who also doubles as coach of the home base team of Nigeria won’t be on the bench when the team takes on Portugal in an intentional friendly game, Owngoalnigeria.com can exclusively reveal.
Yusuf who is the second assistant to head coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Jose Peseiro wasn’t among the backroom staff listed for the trip to Portugal for the game on the 17th of November.
We gathered, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) currently has financial Issues and has decided to trim the number of backroom staff who will make the trip for the game and Yusuf was among the coaches dropped from the trip.
The explanation partly down to the fact that he is in Costa Rica already for a friendly game against with the B team of Nigeria and he was also with the Nigeria U23 team for three weeks ahead of their qualifiers against Tanzania. They won both games to qualify for the next round of the U23 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Peseiro who has his foreign assistants will now work with the coach of Enyimba Finidi George who is back in the team after missing the last trip for the friendly game against Algeria. Usman Abdallah the third assistant will also be available per what sources told us.
As at the time of filing in this report, the list of the players invited for the game is yet to be made official by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) although invited players have been contacted on the orders of coach of the team Peseiro.