Whoever is Salisu Yusuf’s talisman or marabout, that person deserves a national award for helping one of the most incompetent football coaches ever in the history of Nigeria to continue to toy and wipe smiles off the faces of millions of soccer loving Nigerians.
The man whose name has now become synonymous with failure at anything he touches has continued to enjoy a befuddling patronage from the people who call the shots in the Glass House. The Glass House is the Abuja office of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF. Regardless of who is in charge as the NFF President, from Aminu Maigari, to Amaju Pinnick and lately Ibrahim Gusau, it appears Yusuf has something on all of them that makes it impossible to give him the boot.
Even when he got punished for taking bribes by FIFA, it was as if the NFF was waiting for the ban to be lifted, hardly had his punishment period elapsed that the NFF brought him back into the fold as one of the national team managers. For the records, Yusuf was banned for collecting bribes as an assistant coach of the Super Eagles. He was caught on camera in August 2018 accepting cash from men who posed as football agents to select two players for his Morocco 2018 African Nations Championship.
Yusuf was he in charge when the Nigerian team, the home based Super Eagles lost the CHAN ticket for the 2023 competition to Ghana.
In his usual fashion of failure, the U-23 team, popularly called the Dream Team after its exploit at the Atlanta ’96 Olympic Games where the team won gold medal in the soccer event has failed to qualify for the Under 23 AFCON, meaning that our dream of participating in the soccer event of the next Olympic Games, will remain that, a dream. The team drew in Abuja and went away to Morocco and lost to Guinea.
Whoever are the godfathers forcing Salisu Yusuf on the hierarchy of the NFF has done Nigerian soccer enough damages and it is about time they schedule a meeting with their conscience as Salisu Yusuf has remained nothing but a curse to the game that is very close to the hearts of millions of Nigerians.
About Victor Ganzallo
Victor Ganzallo is an upcoming mobile young man making an impact on society. He started out as a journalist went into PR then went into marketing communications. At some point, he diverted into sports marketing, merchandising, equipment, sports wear, and related items.