By Ebube Dikke

A former Junior international, who is now a Premiership Coach in Thailand, Adebayo Gbadebo has opined that the quality of Nigeria league affects the rating of Nigerian coaches outside the country.

Gbadebo, who spoke to a Popular WhatsApp Platform “FCT Football Update” said with the quality of talents that are abound in the country, that Nigerian coaches are supposed to be in hot demand in the foreign countries, but standard of the league and football been played, can not encourage any serious minded club to hire a Nigerian coach.

The former Stationery Stores of Lagos player said if Nigerian coaches would want to have a look at outside Nigeria, they should be ready to refresh themselves and step up in the pyramid of the profession.

Gbadebo who is the Manager/Head Coach of Suphanburi FC of Thailand, a Premier league club in Thailand further revealed that coaching a team outside the shores of the country depends on the owners of the club, how they see the team, how they want the team to play and the plans they have for the team, that is what determines the type of Coach they will engage “this can be achieved when they watch our matches on Television or YouTube, see the quality of the games and coaches who are on top of what they are doing, the people will start taking a look at our coaches. A coach must have the requirements needed”.

Continuing, he said “Nigeria football is very interesting, but the quality of the league needs improvement so that those foreign administrator would want to have those handling the teams to help them o develop theirs. But, if we compare the standard of what we have now, it will be difficult for Nigerian coaches to handle any team outside the country”.

The Coach who also played for now defunct Eagle Cement of Port Harcourt in 1992 frowned at the use of artificial turf for league matches saying that that as the worst thing that would happen to Nigeria football “playing on artificial turf is bad. It lowers the standard of game. There is no where in the world that they are using artificial turf for their league matches. The stage matters, and that is what is depriving us the opportunity of seeing the lot of talents that are in our league” he concluded.

Adebayo Gbadebo, a Sociology graduate of the University of Ibadan, helped Stationery Stores of Lagos to play up to the Semi finals of the African Champions cup in 1993 before he joined Bouri FC of Lebanon, Mohun Bagan of India, Tore Sasana of Thailand, and retired at PS Pekambaru of Indonesia. He is an AFC Pro License holder, and has Port FC as General manager, Rajpracha FC as Technical Director before joining Suphanburi FC, as their Technical Director and now the Head Coach of the club.