Ex-Super Eagles Coach, SUNDAY OLISEH Opens Up

• Compares Super Eagles Then & Now!

Olympic & AFCON Gold Medalist, FIFA technical expert, ex-Pro. Footballer, Pro. Coach (Ex-Super Eagles) Analyst & Author, Love of Tennis, Sunday Ogochukwu Oliseh is regarded as physically yet technically gifted. He played for European clubs including Ajax, Borussia Dortmund, and Juventus. He is widely regarded as one of the best African midfielders ever.

Oliseh played 63 international matches and scored three goals for Nigeria, and played at the 1994 and 1998 FIFA World Cups.

Oliseh who was voted Africa’s third-best footballer in 1998 by CAF in a radio interview with Lagos Talks 91.3 FM a few days ago, explained why the Football Federation should have a quota for the home-based players in the National team. Below are the excerpts from the interview.

Should there be a quota for NPFL players in the National team?

Yes. I find it very, very good. Why? Because in the sense that you’re kind of like breathing air into the local league. You’re bringing an air of optimism into the league and making the players realise that you’re not forgotten. You know, you’re in the plan. And, otherwise, why would you want to have a local league? The essence of having a local league is to produce players to get to the top of the world and to have a competition where the country itself gets entertained. But if you’re going to have to start picking players, sometimes they pick players based on the fact that we have to have certain people from this part of the country in the team no matter what happens. That’s the one I was trying to refer to when you first asked because If we do that one, my brother, we have no chance.

The issue surrounding a certain player from Bayer Leverkusen, Victor Boniface, who hasn’t hit the ground running with the national team, consistently gets invited. I believe that if you’re not doing it for the national team, then give the space to somebody else who’s most likely able to do it. It just seems that people are more in tune with giving him time and time again and opportunities to prove himself. I don’t know what you think, because during the time at the Super Eagles, there was no space for anybody to not hit the ground running. But now, it just seems like it’s permissible with the Super Eagles. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah. This kind of attitude surrounding the Super Eagles you just clearly stated now, is one of the reasons why we’re not performing. You don’t pick players by sentiment. You pick players by performance. If a player is an established player of the Super Eagles, and he goes through a phase whereby two or three games he’s not helping himself, I can understand. Because he’s already done, you know. You leave him with that. But in this instance of Boniface, I watched Boniface play all the time, I find him an exceptional player. I find him a very, very good player. But he’s been struggling with the Super Eagles. But you cannot afford to keep Boniface out of the Super Eagles. So I think it has to be a gradual process. Now, if he starts the game and he’s not doing well, he starts the second game and he’s not doing well, look, if he doesn’t have a birthright to the Super Eagles starting line-up, you have to sit him on the bench, gradually introduce him in, maybe towards the end of the games. Normally, Nigeria dominates games and should be winning at the 60th minute. Then you bring in such a player. But then again, he also needs to be able to live with the pressure. If you’re not performing with the Super Eagles, you must also understand in your mind that at one point, you might no longer get invited. We’ve had players in the Super Eagles who, during my time, who did well in their clubs, came to the Super Eagles and we used to say, ah, he’s one of the Super Eagles players. You know, so they will not get played. And if he likes it or not, he has to live with it. But I think if you want to play in the Super Eagles, we have to use the Performance principle. If you are performing, you are playing. If you are not performing, you don’t play.

How about if we flip it? How about a player like Iheanacho, he has been a feature in the Super Eagles, but career-wise, I think when he scored for his club, Sevilla FC recently, that was his first club goal in almost a year, do players like that deserve to be called? Another is Umar Sadiq, that has been called up to the Super Eagles and he has not been performing for his club You know, so what’s your take on a player that has done well in the past with the Super Eagles, but he’s kind of gone missing in his club, what’s your thinking on that? That’s the almost opposite of what Victor Boniface is going through.

Nobody has a birthright to the Super Eagles. And let’s face it, even those of us who performed for 10 years non-stop at the highest level for Nigeria, at one point, we also have to say goodbye. I think life is a stage, at one point, you will be on stage. At one point, also, another act has to come in. And the way I see it is that, if he’s not performing at his club, why would you be inviting him to the national team if he’s not playing also at the national team? This is taking up one place that you can give to somebody else, maybe even to a home-based player. Like, give him a chance. I have nothing against Iheanacho. I like the lad, you know. And I see them all call him senior man and all that. He’s good. He’s great. But then you also have to look at the reality of the fact that this is not a club, and it’s not a friendly club. It’s not a social club. It’s a national team, for Christ’s sake. So that means, if you don’t perform, you don’t play. One thing you have to know is that you see players in the national team, we have groups. You can’t stop people from having groups. And you have people also, each time you invite someone who they feel is not worth being there, they will be complaining in the back, and that complaining brings division when the referee blows the whistle, and you stop. “Because, you know, you’re not supposed to be there anyway. You just invite them when they invite them, you know”, that kind of stuff, with this, the manager wouldn’t succeed. You always have problems.

I’m glad you mentioned the issue of groups Or factions. We’re going to go there, but it seems like it’s come a little early because of the word that you used. But was there a mafia in the Super Eagles during your time? We’ve heard so much about it, we’ve read so much, but no Super Eagles player up to date has really confirmed or even denied it, can you tell us?

Mafia? We don’t have a Mafia. If you say Mafia, you mean… Because the mafia itself is like a government besides the government. It’s a second government, you know. It’s ruling. People are paying taxes to the government, the national government that we all voted for. And people are still paying tax to this, you know, this second government that’s on the side. That is what happened in the Super Eagles. But there is something that we have and that will always exist in the Super Eagles, whether you like it or not because it exists in every club in the world. You always have a group of players, especially mostly players who play regularly and who are personalities in the team. These players, you know, always like discuss among themselves how things should go, you know. And these players, normally, are supposed to be a group of leaders. Now, I will share with you, that when I was the Captain of the Super Eagles for about three years, what I used to do was this, if an issue came up, I could not just bring it to everybody. Sometimes it’s sensitive issues, everybody that maybe, some new players that just came in, some young ones and everything. So there were like 5, 6 players who are players who have been there for a long time, who have experience and who have personality. You would call them and you would tell them, look, boss, they are supposed to play so-and-so, now they are proposing this. This is what we have. What do you guys think? You know, and then you would share with them. Then, you as the captain will now take it back to the authorities and say, look, oh, we no agree or we accept. You know, that is, if you want to call that a mafia, then you have a Mafia in everything. We have that in Juventus. We have it in Ajax. We have it in Borussia Dortmund. We have a group of people. And most times, I was part of those leaders, even in these clubs, except for Juventus, whereby you would be called upon and then they would say, what do you think? You know, sometimes even the coach calls these five people and says, look, these are the people I want to talk to. That’s the funniest part. It’s not as if the players create the mafia, it’s usually the coaches who create these senior players and say, these are the guys I want to talk to and ask them these things. So, if that’s what you’re talking about, if you call that Mafia, then you have it everywhere.

By Benprince Ezeh

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