2025 AFCON: Eguavoen to lead Eagles as Labbadia deal fails

The Nigeria Football Federation has confirmed that ex-international and technical director, Austin Eguavoen, will handle the Super Eagles in their 2025 AFCON qualifiers against the Benin Republic and Rwanda in September, following their inability to secure the services of German coach Bruno Labbadia.

NFF said the deal to appoint the 58-year-old was aborted due to stringent German tax laws.

“We have been on the tax issue for the past three days, and I told him clearly that there was no way the NFF will agree to offset the concomitant tax percentage on his salary that will be demanded by German tax authorities,” NFF president Ibrahim Gusau said in a statement on Friday.

“It is not possible for us to shoulder the responsibility of shelling out another money, between 32 per and 40 per cent of his salary, after paying the agreed monthly wage.

“The NFF and Mr. Labbadia reached an agreement in principle before we made the announcement that he would become the head coach of the Super Eagles. The tax details were never part of our discussions, and he had personally agreed to all terms before the tax issue came up. We were doing our best to be flexible in the discussions, but he was adamant that the NFF had to pay the full tax amount as well. We simply cannot do that.”

Labbadia’s decision comes seven days before Nigeria’s 2025 AFCON qualifiers against the Benin Republic, leaving the NFF to turn to Eguavoen.

“In the event, Technical Director of Nigeria Football Federation, Coach Augustine Eguavoen, will now take charge of the Super Eagles for the upcoming 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches against Benin Republic (Uyo, September 7) and Rwanda (Kigali, September 10),” the statement added.

It will be Eguavoen’s fourth stint in charge of the three-time African champions, after earlier experience in 2005-2007, 2010 and 2022.

He was in charge of the ill-fated 2022 World Cup qualifier playoff between Nigeria and Ghana, in which the Super Eagles missed the ticket to Qatar.

Though the Nigerian offer is the first national team offer for Labbadia, a German outlet, Kicker reported that the German coach has not yet chalked off the dream of taking over a national team.

If the deal had been successful, he would have been the 37th head coach of the Super Eagles and the sixth German to handle the team.