Okey Sampson, Aba
Former Flying Eagles coach, John Sam Obuh is worried at the rate players of the Super Eagles are quitting the senior national team in the guise of retirement, saying it will not be in the interest of Nigerian football.
Speaking exclusively to Sunday Sunsports over the weekend at his country home, Asaga, Ohafia, in Ohafia Local Government of Abia State, Obuh who had coached many clubs in the country, said Nigeria has good and talented players, but his problem was at the rate they are retiring early.
“We have good players, but the only issue I’m having with them now is the rate at which many of them retiring because I don’t know whether it was rumour, somebody was telling me that even Ighalo and Mikel have retired from the national team.
“No, you don’t leave that kind of vacuum just like that. Flow along; allow the team to get to a certain level before you leave. It’s good for them to leave, people say you can leave while the ovation is loudest, but don’t leave the team naked, he warned.
On the recently concluded AFCON competition, Obuh gave the Super Eagles and the technical bench kudos for winning the bronze medal although he had wished they won gold.
“I would not say I will not give kudos to the country’s national team and technical bench because it is not easy to have gotten to that stage and came out 3rd, though we were expected to play in the final and get gold. It’s a tournament that so many countries came and we were 3rd but Nigeria is bigger than that because that is something we’ve got for a very long time, what we wanted more to our positions was to finish first.”
He said in football competition, a team is judged by those who defeated them and element of luck. “You know that in football, most at times you judge the people that defeated you, the extent they went in the competition. Madagascar defeated us; they went a little bit further. That is to say they are not bad the way we want to look at them by the size of their country; we should look at them by the quality of their play and the extant they have developed.
“Algeria defeated us, not because they played better than us, but because they had the luck more than us and that was why at the last minute you saw them scoring that free kick. Otherwise, the second half of that particular game, we were on top of the game, but unfortunately for us we had that lapse that cost us the match.”
He advised the national team players who are desirous to quit now to tarry a while for their replacements to be discovered.