Update: Egypt hires Mexican as new NT coach

[Heliopolis]

Mexican Javier Aguirre, who took his country to the 2010 WC and managed Atletico Madrid before that is Egypt's new NT coach. He'll be paid $1.4M per year until 2022.

In Egypt we don't have the 'foreign coach' controversy for a few reasons. Rightly or wrongly, Egyptians including the NT players think that foreign coaches have more international experience and are better at instilling discipline into their teams (Egyptian players are notoriously undisciplined). Our legendary goalkeeper El-Hadary said that himself last week when asked whether the coach should be Egyptian or foreign. The second main reason is we don't produce too many good coaches in general. One of the reasons for this is our league is dominated by Ahly with Zamalek, Ismaily, and a couple other clubs putting in decent showings and winning the league from time to time. This means that most coaches have crappy teams and anytime they have a good player they get sold to Ahly or Zamalek. Ahly and Zamalek hire Egyptian coaches but also rely a lot on foreigners so even our best clubs aren't good at developing local coaches. Now that I think about it, we have the same problem as nearly every African country.

[EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA]

God bless Shehata!

[The real deal]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

[EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

When I wrote that CAF should invite the rest of the Arab nations and form a new confederation they said kongi don smoke ifa weed. They have the money, the infrastructure and the hunger to develope just like we do. Scrap Afcon, replace it with the CAF Gulf cup. Nigeria, Iran, Saudi,Cameroun Senegal and other will play for a title every 4 yrs.

It's the only way to go.

[realtrouble]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

When I wrote that CAF should invite the rest of the Arab nations and form a new confederation they said kongi don smoke ifa weed. They have the money, the infrastructure and the hunger to develope just like we do. Scrap Afcon, replace it with the CAF Gulf cup. Nigeria, Iran, Saudi,Cameroun Senegal and other will play for a title every 4 yrs.

It's the only way to go.

Very good Idea, I notice that Mexico and Costa Rica are invited to some of the South American competitions. The Gulf states will generate the funds, Africa will provide the competition.

[Bell]

Mexican Javier Aguirre, who took his country to the 2010 WC and managed Atletico Madrid before that. Its not confirmed yet but the Egyptian FA recently put out a shortlist of 4 managers they were considering and he was one of them. Subsequent reports have said he's in Egypt and the Egyptian FA confirmed they will unveil the new manager this Wednesday. (Source below).

In Egypt we don't have the 'foreign coach' controversy for a few reasons. Rightly or wrongly, Egyptians including the NT players think that foreign coaches have more international experience and are better at instilling discipline into their teams (Egyptian players are notoriously undisciplined). Our legendary goalkeeper El-Hadary said that himself last week when asked whether the coach should be Egyptian or foreign. The second main reason is we don't produce too many good coaches in general. One of the reasons for this is our league is dominated by Ahly with Zamalek, Ismaily, and a couple other clubs putting in decent showings and winning the league from time to time. This means that most coaches have crappy teams and anytime they have a good player they get sold to Ahly or Zamalek. Ahly and Zamalek hire Egyptian coaches but also rely a lot on foreigners so even our best clubs aren't good at developing local coaches. Now that I think about it, we have the same problem as nearly every African country.

http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/8/549 ... -Wednesday

A MOST RETROGRESSIVE STEP

At this point, the attitude in Egypt (if not all African countries) is to say, "we win with an Egyptian or we lose with one." Losing is what Egypt has essentially always done anyway. If not now, when? It looks like the criterion is anyone who's not an Egyptian. Or African.
Bell

[Bell]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

I DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF LIMITING ONESELF TO "MEDIUM POWERS"

The World Cup is won by the big powers, not the medium ones. Aim for the best and don't hold your self back, please.
Bell

[Kabalega]

1. Develop your own local coaches

2. Even better, work with youth coachs and promote them as the boys progress through stages. This ensures some continuity, Both and players grow together and spend more time as a unit. This mitigates the problem of NT playing together far less than they should.

3. EFA should select units (e.g. defensive, midfield units) from Zamalek, or Al Ahly because they play together year round. When Shehata won all those Nations Cups, Egypt would camp for over a month before a tournament.

4. How good is the EFA organizationally? This is CAF's biggest problem. It was not that long ago that the EFA headquarters were razed down.

5. The Egyptian league is also still recovering from past troubles.

[Heliopolis]

1. Develop your own local coaches

2. Even better, work with youth coachs and promote them as the boys progress through stages. This ensures some continuity, Both and players grow together and spend more time as a unit. This mitigates the problem of NT playing together far less than they should.

3. EFA should select units (e.g. defensive, midfield units) from Zamalek, or Al Ahly because they play together year round. When Shehata won all those Nations Cups, Egypt would camp for over a month before a tournament.

4. How good is the EFA organizationally? This is CAF's biggest problem. It was not that long ago that the EFA headquarters were razed down.

5. The Egyptian league is also still recovering from past troubles.

I agree that its short-sighted for the EFA to continue to go abroad. We have 100M people, tons of players, we spend more than most in our continent/region on the sport, and yet we don't produce good coaches. Its yet another indication of how poor the EFA is. Much of our failure at this WC was due to incompetence and corruption. I won't bore you with the details but we have the same problems that plague other African FA's and countries in general. Rather than anyone taking responsibility we just blamed our foreign coach for our awful performance.

[kalani JR]

God bless Shehata!

I've always wanted for the NFF to hire Shehata, I don't know why other African teams haven't.

[Heliopolis]

God bless Shehata!

I've always wanted for the NFF to hire Shehata, I don't know why other African teams haven't.

They negotiated with him a few years ago but they didn't reach a deal. I doubt he'd succeed elsewhere for the simple fact he's had limited success outside of tournament formats. He hasnt done anything since leaving our NT. I also think he's finished as a manager due to his age. He's probably just relaxing in Cairo these days.

[The real deal]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

I DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF LIMITING ONESELF TO "MEDIUM POWERS"

The World Cup is won by the big powers, not the medium ones. Aim for the best and don't hold your self back, please.
Bell

The BIG powers are unlikely to cooperate with us by signing MOU for commercial purposes and development of their players..... Nothing for the likes of Real madrid, Bayern, Juventus, ManU, Corinthians to gain playing Ahly, Eyimba, Canon Yaounde and 3 other teams in our countries off season. I'm thinking a 4 weeks a year program where Egypt will go with Snr pharaoah team, their U23, Ismail, Zamalek, Academy players will camp in colombia and play max # games with similar outfit from Japan, Uruguay, Japan and Holland....That'd be max gain for our players and coaches........
The BIG powers of football will not do that IMHO
On the other hand while Wafu will improve our players and coaches, the way to get em to next level is to continously test them against other regions/ powers in a sustained way....... The stadia in these other countries are filled more with BIGGER currency which benefits us too.... Our folks are poor and do not have enough disposable income to come out in such atmosphere....they cannot pay 110k per game for 4 weeks to watch BIG teams in that format

[Heliopolis]

There must be another reason why CAF remains behind in global football. I think we need to rethink competition @ the continental level and try to link up with medium powers to improve our competitive edge. CAF needs to look into arranging a 2-3 weeks in 2-4 countries where good crowd and earnings can help these teams in CAF champions and CAF cups. We can also sign cultural MOU in sports with medium powers...Colombia, Japan, Uruguay, Holland and organize off season inter club competitions that will expose our coaches and players....Benefit will be unbelievable in coaches/players/ national std in a few yrs

I DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF LIMITING ONESELF TO "MEDIUM POWERS"

The World Cup is won by the big powers, not the medium ones. Aim for the best and don't hold your self back, please.
Bell

The BIG powers are unlikely to cooperate with us by signing MOU for commercial purposes and development of their players..... Nothing for the likes of Real madrid, Bayern, Juventus, ManU, Corinthians to gain playing Ahly, Eyimba, Canon Yaounde and 3 other teams in our countries off season. I'm thinking a 4 weeks a year program where Egypt will go with Snr pharaoah team, their U23, Ismail, Zamalek, Academy players will camp in colombia and play max # games with similar outfit from Japan, Uruguay, Japan and Holland....That'd be max gain for our players and coaches........
The BIG powers of football will not do that IMHO
On the other hand while Wafu will improve our players and coaches, the way to get em to next level is to continously test them against other regions/ powers in a sustained way....... The stadia in these other countries are filled more with BIGGER currency which benefits us too.... Our folks are poor and do not have enough disposable income to come out in such atmosphere....they cannot pay 110k per game for 4 weeks to watch BIG teams in that format

People like you have given way more thought to improving African footy than the average African FA. The fact is the rest of the world is improving in this sport while Africa is regressing. We should've been way more developed now than we were in the 1990s (when our WC spots increased) but have not learned any lessons. At the current rate we will embarrass ourselves again at the 2022 WC.

[Heliopolis]

Javier Aguirre has been confirmed as our new coach until 2022. He will make $1.4 M per year. The Egyptian FA said they considered 4 Egyptians as candidates but I think they just announced the names to appease those who want us to hire a domestic coach. The names they listed were guys that were completely unviable for one reason or another which suggests to me the FA was only looking to go external.

[EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA]

Javier Aguirre has been confirmed as our new coach until 2022. He will make $1.4 M per year. The Egyptian FA said they considered 4 Egyptians as candidates but I think they just announced the names to appease those who want us to hire a domestic coach. The names they listed were guys that were completely unviable for one reason or another which suggests to me the FA was only looking to go external.

[txj]

Developing local coaching capability does not always have to be seen in the same context as use of non-indigenous coaches. The two can exist side by side.

Don't get me wrong, I do support use of LCs, but the real question is about making the best choice at any given time.

I like Javier Aguirre; one of the rue original thinkers in the game...

[metalalloy]

Developing local coaching capability does not always have to be seen in the same context as use of non-indigenous coaches. The two can exist side by side.

Don't get me wrong, I do support use of LCs, but the real question is about making the best choice at any given time.

I like Javier Aguirre; one of the rue original thinkers in the game...

That should be the only criteria. Unfortunately, most often, its journeymen that we can afford, or are willing.

[txj]

Developing local coaching capability does not always have to be seen in the same context as use of non-indigenous coaches. The two can exist side by side.

Don't get me wrong, I do support use of LCs, but the real question is about making the best choice at any given time.

I like Javier Aguirre; one of the rue original thinkers in the game...

That should be the only criteria. Unfortunately, most often, its journeymen that we can afford, or are willing.

Javier Aguirre is not a journeyman coach. Pep Guardiola referenced him in his biography as one of those he spoke with in his 'apprenticeship' period.

[metalalloy]

Developing local coaching capability does not always have to be seen in the same context as use of non-indigenous coaches. The two can exist side by side.

Don't get me wrong, I do support use of LCs, but the real question is about making the best choice at any given time.

I like Javier Aguirre; one of the rue original thinkers in the game...

That should be the only criteria. Unfortunately, most often, its journeymen that we can afford, or are willing.

Javier Aguirre is not a journeyman coach. Pep Guardiola referenced him in his biography as one of those he spoke with in his 'apprenticeship' period.

i agree. My comment was just in general for past appointments of foreign coaches by African countries, not towards Javier Aguirre.

[Heliopolis]

Developing local coaching capability does not always have to be seen in the same context as use of non-indigenous coaches. The two can exist side by side.

Don't get me wrong, I do support use of LCs, but the real question is about making the best choice at any given time.

I like Javier Aguirre; one of the rue original thinkers in the game...

We can agree on these points but the issue in Africa is not much is done to develop local coaches. This short-sightedness is why we tend to go foreign.

metalloy is right; due to limited resources we often resign ourselves to embarrassingly hiring journeyman coaches that have managed 10-15 sides with little to show for it. Some of the foreign coaches that have been hired by Egyptian clubs have been a joke. Pretty much hired on the basis of having a foreign passport and few options available domestically.

I don't know much about Aguirre. I'll watch our upcoming games and judge him after 5 or so matches.

[Coach]

@Helio, what limits the resources? The hand that rocks the cradle brethren. For as long as those gold ring laden hands, see the cradle as the cash cow, rather than the needy suckling whom they should nourish, Africa is going nowhere in the world of sport. Nigeria are a classic example, moonwalking their way down the developmental curve. Simply put, the powers that be lack the vision and altruism, to see an oak from an acorn.

[Coach]

@Bell, on the grand scale, there is precious little pizzazz about African sides, they don't have the pulling power of a Brazil or Germany. Despite countless failures since their last success, the mere mention of Brazil fills stadiums and has cameras rolling across the globe. They're a brand, commodified and marketed. That is where Africa has failed, what have they done to brand their product, to pitch it to the consumer? In quintessentially African fashion, federations are tugging at the cow's udders, filling their pails with milk and scurrying off to drink the proceeds of their plunder. The same milk could feed the calves that grow the herd. Immediate gratification, the scourge of many an African state. No concept of longevity, no visual acuity beyond the end of one's nose. Rather a wrinkled old fool, spent and discarded by the standard's of the day, dressed up in Nike green and dangled before the masses as a king salmon. Pathetic.

Theres a need for reform and revolution with the whole sporting sector. Can Nigeria not be for African football, what Brazil has been for South American? Its no a matter of merely aspiring to be the best, to be the best, one must case study those successful, make comparative analyses and set about a path towards emulation. Investment is key, there is money, but where there is money, there is a culture for its misappropriation. No African nation can simply wake up and say "and today Matthew, we're going to be France 2018", this is an endpoint reached through means that Africa has never pursued. After hosting an African world cup, after being afforded that greatest of stages, how did South Africa capitalise on having the consumers attention? They had the eyes of the world for 4 weeks, was it to the benefit of South African football? Is the league more readily accessible, is the product pushed further afield? Truth is, Africa is happy in its position as also ran, happy to be Virgil to the rest of the world's Ted DiBiase, once in a while being able to wear a shiny suit and dine with a hall outside the hall of famer.

[Coach]

@Tx, given the national team calendar, what prevents coaching convoys from being sent to sabbatical, observe, further qualifications off-season? A whole Pep Guardiola, after how many trophies and overseeing arguably the finest club team of the modern era, felt the need to develop and learn. How many African national team coaches, are their spectacular failure in Russia, are readying themselves to visit the likes of Belgium, France, Croatia, England to see what steps and strategies brought them so far? Croatia of 4 million people, is dwarfed by Nigeria how many times over and yet, look at their achievement, look at their produce.