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For The National Team
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Ex-Super Eagles Coach, SUNDAY OLISEH
Olympic & AFCON Gold Medalist, who is also a FIFA Technical Expert, Ex-Pro. Footballer, Pro. Coach (Ex-Super Eagles) Analyst & Author, Lover of Tennis, Sunday Ogochukwu Oliseh is regarded as physically yet technically gifted. He played for top European clubs including Ajax, Borussia Dortmund, and Juventus. He is widely regarded as one of the best African midfielders of all time.
Oliseh played 63 international matches and scored 3 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 must assist financially in the coaching courses of local based coaches. Below are the excerpts from the interview.
Can you tell us your issues with Vincent Enyeama and Mikel Obi? Rumour had it that you excluded them from your team when you were the manager of the National team.
No, what I was just trying to say is that look, please, I think it is unfair to start thinking as if one came into the national team with a vendetta against anybody. No, it was the interest of the nation at first. If you didn’t serve the interest of the nation, I felt that If you don’t serve the interest of the nation, you shouldn’t be, you know, on the national team because you’re supposed to serve the country. And even to this day, look, to tell you one thing, if I decide to coach now and they tell me I need a goalkeeper coach or something, I might call Enyeama. That is to the point. Because that’s the way I see it. Because it’s nothing personal. Furthermore, he’s my countryman. He’s my younger brother. So, you know, that is how it is.
How do we get one Nigerian coach the opportunity to do the best they can at all levels? Super Falcons, Super Eagles, two, how do we get NPFL players into the squad? How do we make it? Is it the responsibility of the Football Federation to pay for the coaching courses of our local base coaches?
Normally, yes. When you see when I did my coaching badges in the UK, while I paid fully to get my licenses, B, A, and Pro licenses, the ones who came in as Englishmen, had their certificates and their coaching courses subsidized by the companies. And we were coming from outside and everything. So they were getting a lot of help. And they were also getting help to get places because every year you get only 18 people that can do Pro licenses in all of the UK. So to secure those places, they get help from the Federation. So the Federation has a key role to play. And what you’re asking is that even when it comes to coaching, the Federation has a role to play as regards the coaches’ education. You see, the thing there is that you can say, oh, what do you want? I’ll go against the NFF or whatever. But you cannot succeed in Nigerian football without the NFF. The NFF is needed and that is why I think in a way too, sometimes people should just stop criticizing the NFF. But maybe, you know, this dialogue should be created. Because that should be both sides. The press needs the NFF and the NFF needs the press. But they both need each other, not in a way where one is controlling the other. So that is how I feel that the coaching itself should be because, without good coaching, you can’t produce quality football.
What I was just saying is that we need the federation. The federation needs to be brought into the discussion. The federation also needs to be pushed to act. and they are not in a castigating form. Nobody has to look for compromises. It has to be like that, I think.
I’d like to ask you about playing in Europe because I know we talk about Nigerian football all the time. But playing in Europe generally, you played for some of the biggest clubs in Europe, Ajax, and Dortmund, but I’m very interested about your time at Juventus. While I was reading your book, you mentioned being in a Juventus dressing room with superstars like Zidane, Antonio Conte, and Del Piero. What was it like for you playing with those guys?
It was a learning process. When I got there, one of the first things that struck me was that, men, say what they want about the Super Eagles, but the Super Eagles are great. The atmosphere in the dressing room is great. You find out it was a different world, and the dressing room had players like Conte, who now eventually became coach of Chelsea. We also had people like Zidane, Del Piero, Edgar Davids, and all that. We had superstars. The team was made up of only internationals. We hardly had a player who was not playing for the national team. But then you find out really that if you don’t have the performance principle, like at Juventus, being second, we lost. If we’re second in the league, it’s a bad year. If we win, it’s only if we win that it is normal. In fact, losing is not an option. So that keeps you on your toes for the whole 34 games of the season. You have to keep winning, winning, winning, winning.
You played for all the big clubs in Europe, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, and Ajax. How come you never played in England?
I got a lot of offers from England. In fact, we got one time an offer from Chelsea, but no, I didn’t want to go there. I got an offer from Manchester United. Instead, I went to Juventus. That was the year I went to Juventus. I got an offer also from Juventus.
I thought nobody refused to play for Manchester United.
No, no, no. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t refuse. I got a better offer from Juventus. It’s not that I refused. I got an offer from Newcastle, and that was when Ruud Gullit was there. Newcastle came and Ajax said no. They didn’t want to sell. They said they were not going to sell one of their top players to a club like Newcastle. But Newcastle is big now.
Having seen how the English league has progressed in the last couple of years, do you regard it as the best league in the world or is it the most entertaining in the world?
I think it is both. I think it is both. It is the best league in the fact that thanks to the financial powerhouse that it has become, it attracts the best players from around the world and the best coaches. And also because of the spectacle that is now played. Formerly, the English football, when we played English games in Europe, it was easy, because they just played long balls, we just kept the ball down and you defeated them. But now, they play everything. They got it in the Premier League. They are the ones playing it directly and everything. But what is great about the league is the pace of the league is so much. It is so fast. And the attention of the world on it. Because of the attention of the world on it, the image rights, TV rights, it is going into billions. No league can be as competitive as that now. Because forgive me, but footballers, we are like…I wouldn’t call names, but we are like these people. Where the money is, is where we are locked.
That game against Italy at the FIFA World Cup, I’ve always wanted to know. When we lost, what was the reaction in the dressing room after the game?
All hell went loose, brother. All hell went loose. I wouldn’t call names, but somebody wanted to trash coach Clemens Westerhof. So, we had to hold him away.
Do they think it was his fault?
Yes, they confronted him in the dressing room that he was using sentiments to make the team. But all hell went loose in the dressing room. I was so sad. We were all in tears, all of us were in tears. Almost everybody was in tears because we would have beaten them. But it went wild. And, to be honest with you, that was the last time I ever laid eyes on Westerhof, Face to face. It was the last time I met him. The next time I saw him was at the parking lot of a hotel in Meridian, but he was far away. That was the time when there was a lot of lobbying going around to replace Philippe Troussier. I saw him from afar and I didn’t want to go say hello because I felt he was also part of those lobbying to take the man’s job. I felt it was ungodly. But that was the last time I saw Westerhof in the dressing room in that situation.
You guys accomplished so much as a team in 1994 and then went on in 1996 to do what you did. Why is it that there’s no love lost between the set of you guys of 1994? Because we all seem to believe that there’s a lot of backbiting, a lot of dislike within the 1994 squad. Is this true and why?
It’s sad. It’s one of the most saddening things that I have to go through, and I thank you very much for asking this question. It’s one of the greatest regrets I have as a human being. Because we suffered a lot together, we served a nation that we love together. And I think it’s each time I hear these comments, I’m fortunate, that I don’t live in Nigeria. Because each time I come back I hear what is going on amongst my colleagues. I had my share also when I became a coach. But when I hear what’s happening amongst my ex-colleagues, I feel sad. Because, look, nobody’s going to live forever, at some point, we’re all going to die someday. But why must we always be against each other? You know football is a friendly warfare. We went to friendly warfare on behalf of our country together. So we shouldn’t be against one another. If one of us is appointed as a Super Eagles coach, we attack him, instead of supporting him. And the man who is coaching now, even when he comes out, he’s thinking, when you get there, I will attack you too, which is normal. But it’s unfair.
–Benprince Ezeh
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