Chukwu, others hope Nigeria will rise again on FIFA ranking

Chukwu told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) last Friday in Enugu that though it was not a welcome development, soccer fans should not regard it as the country’s failure in football. “Nigeria will still come up. It is a normal thing which has happened to all football countries. So ours is not an exception. […]

Chukwu told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) last Friday in Enugu that though it was not a welcome development, soccer fans should not regard it as the country’s failure in football.

“Nigeria will still come up. It is a normal thing which has happened to all football countries. So ours is not an exception.

“What we are interested in now is to settle the football crises in the NFF. This is a major problem that is adversely affecting our team’s performance,’’ he said.

Chukwu said there must be peace and sanity in soccer administration for Nigeria to move forward.

“We have to do that with one mind, so that our team will rise to move up in the ranking again,” he said

In the same vein, Fred Okpala, a former Rangers of Enugu player and coach of Internazionale FC of Enugu, said the outside world had a lot of respect for Nigeria’s football.

“Government should tackle the problem of NFF which affects football for us to move forward,’’ he said.

Dominic Nwobodo, also an ex-Rangers players said Nigeria needed to start early to prepare ahead of major tournaments.

“Nigeria has the problem of late preparation and this is not in our best interest. We need to put ourselves together, if we want to do well in football,’’ Nwobodo said.

According to him, there is need to appoint coaches who will handle the players in good time so that they will get prepared to face any tournament.

“If we do things right, then we will play well and move up again in FIFA ranking”, he said.