Bruno Labbadia's Late U-Turn on the Super Eagles Job: The Truth Behind His Selfish Decision
Nigerians on Friday rose to the News that German Coach Bruno Labbadia has decided to turn his back on resuming duties as New Super Eagles Coach, after he was announced earlier this week as the Head Coach of the Nigeria Senior National team.
The News was first reported by a German Media House , Kicker, then it became very serious that this was not just fake news.
This is coming barely a few days to Nigeria's crucial AFCON Qualifiers against Benin Republic and Rwanda.
This latest Drama has now put the Nigeria Football Federation under fresh Pressure with many slamming words of criticism on the Football Authority.
But while the game of Football is an emotional one and as Nigerians it feels very disappointing that the issue of the Super Eagles Coach is causing an endless Drama, it is very important to understand the real issues without unnecessarily joining a bandwagon of fact-less criticism of the NFF.
I have personally seen several criticisms where people said why did the NFF announce the appointment of the Coach if they had not agreed to all contractual details with him.
The truth is both parties agreed and the coach gave his permission for his name to be announced by the NFF.
But we know all of these are still verbal agreements before he will come down to Nigeria to sign his contract which will then signal the legal binding of everything verbally agreed.
And sometimes before any legal signing of an agreement, any of the parties can still alter or want changes to anything that was verbally agreed.
To further explain why it might be out of place to quickly attack the NFF on this particular turn of event, Bruno Labbadia was the one who sent the Super Eagles list of players for the upcoming games to the NFF.
The 23 man squad was sent to the NFF by Labbadia contrary to what many people know and I ask, if there was no conclusive agreement, would he have done that.
To even give further clarification is for Nigerians to understand that everything concerning his traveling to Nigeria has been concluded for his arrival before his latest U-turn.
This is a man who has already submitted the names of his three Assistants for the purpose of Entry Visa when they arrive in Nigeria.
In fact the Nigeria Immigration Service granted Bruno Labbadia and his three assistant coaches , Richard Krohn, Bernhard Trares and Thies Bliemeister entry permits on Friday , 30th of August while their visas will be issued to them on arrival at the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport in Abuja.
So how possible is all of these if the NFF had no agreement with the Coach.
The truth is Labbadia was just trying to be very unreasonable and selfish by telling the NFF to now pay his taxes in Germany for coming to take the Super Eagles job in Nigeria.
Infact the Leadership of the NFF deserves commendation for not given in to this exploitative demand of the Coach.
The NFF insisted that it is not acceptable that after agreeing to pay you what you requested as salary , they should still be the ones funding your tax payment in Germany on a job you got outside.
Bruno Labbadia is supposed to pay his taxes from his agreed salaries with the NFF but decided to want to play smart, thinking the NFF is so desperate and he was shown that the Football House knows exactly what they are doing.
Written by Micheal Obasi
Sports Affairs Analyst and Journalist
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