Amokachi leads black coaches in from the cold

A black footballer's road to the top coaching positions in Europe can be rocky, or icy, if you are former Beşiktaş, Everton and Nigeria striker Daniel Amokachi. The former assistant coach of Nigeria's national team, Amokachi is running a semi-professional team in Finland in what he calls a "sacrifice" for his future career. It was a bitterly cold day near the end of January when Amokachi arrived in Oulu, just a two-hour drive south of the Arctic Circle, to take on his new job as head coach of second division team JS Hercules.

"I remember when I landed, it was minus 32 Celsius, after flying from a country that is 35 to 38 degrees," Amokachi, 43, who is known as "the Bull," told Agence France-Presse (AFP), comparing the mercuries in his native Nigeria and in Oulu in northern Finland. While conditions in Oulu are not what the former football star is used to, Amokachi is determined to see out his year-long contract.

"The most important thing [about this job] is the challenge. The challenge of being an African and you know why? Because we Africans, it's very difficult to get jobs in Europe as coaches," Amokachi explained. While black players from Africa, the Caribbean and South America dazzle on European pitches, Amokachi is one of the first blacks to take on coaching duties in Finland. The first, and so far only, African to coach a team in the Finnish premier division Veikkausliiga was Zambia's Zeddy Saileti, who co-steered the league's northernmost squad RoPS in Rovaniemi in 2009. But the team ended up embroiled in a game-fixing scandal and Saileti fled the country.