The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has confirmed that the appointment of Bruno Labbadia as head coach of the Super Eagles has been derailed due to strict German tax regulations.
As a result, Technical Director Augustine Eguavoen will now oversee the Super Eagles for the upcoming 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches against Benin Republic (Uyo, September 7) and Rwanda (Kigali, September 10).
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This will be Eguavoen’s fourth term as head coach of the three-time African champions, following previous tenures in 2005-2007, 2010, and 2022.
NFF President Ibrahim Gusau stated that the federation could not cover the additional tax obligations related to Labbadia’s salary, which were not included in the initial agreement.
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“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. It is not possible for us to shoulder the responsibility of shelling out another money, between 32% to 40% 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,” President of NFF, Gusau, said on Friday evening.
On Tuesday, the NFF announced an agreement with German coach Bruno Labbadia to become the head coach of the Super Eagles.
Labbadia would have been the sixth German to manage the team, following Karl-Heinz Marotzke (1970-1974), Gottlieb Göller (1981), Manfred Höner (1988-1989), Berti Vogts (2007-2008), and Gernot Rohr (2016-2021).
