Former Super Eagles coach, Christian Chukwu has warned current Eagles gaffer Sunday Oliseh in clear terms that he cannot coach the national successfully from Europe.
The captain the Green Eagles team that won the Nations Cup for the first time in 1980 in a chat ahead of the two international friendly matches against Congo and Cameroon said that Oliseh needs to make up his mind on how he wants to coach the Super Eagles.
“The first thing that Oliseh should do is to reflect on how he was discovered and brought into the Super Eagles as a player from Julius Berger FC of Lagos. What he is doing at the moment with the national team is short a term plan where he will just call up players from around Europe and get them to play for the national team.”
However, Chukwu pointed out that the problem with the short term plan is that he will never get the best out of them because the players hardly have enough time to train together and build an understanding that would help the team.”
“As a former chief coach of the Super Eagles, the truth I need to tell Oliseh is that he cannot coach the Super Eagles from Europe. He should take his mind back to how he was discovered and go back to the roots. He should develop both a short term plan and a long term plan.
“The short term plan is what he is doing at the moment by calling up players for matches from different parts of Europe. The problem here is that the player who is scoring every week in his club may get to the national team and fumble. The simple reason is that the player already has an understanding with his other team mates who knows his every move. Same will not be the case in the national team until they get used to each other.”
Speaking on the long term plan, Chukwu, who was also captain of Rangers International of Enugu in his playing days said Oliseh needs to take time off from Europe and spend more time in Nigeria.
“Oliseh needs to take some time off in Europe by coming back home and going to match venues to see things for himself. That’s how he was spotted and brought into the national team from Julius Berger FC of Lagos. The likes of Friday Ekpo, John Ene Okon, Friday Elahoh, Daniel Amokachi, Uche Okechukwu, David Ngodigha, Peterside Idah, Ike Shorunmu and many more benefitted from the same system.
“He cannot depart from the system because these are the only set of players that he can camp as long as he wants and impact his own pattern of play into.
“Players he identifies over a period of time based on their consistency week in week out are the ones he can put together and inculcate in them his own style of play that will differentiate him from others before him. The reason most players run to Europe is simply because only foreign based players are given preferential treatment sort of. The players in the league don’t want to spend time in the domestic league because they no longer believe that they will get the same opportunity as their foreign based counterparts. So, if Oliseh builds the nucleus of his team around the domestic league players, he would get the desired result in no time,” Chukwu stressed. (Daily Sun)
