Coaching Kano Pillars is a tough job-Emordi

How do you feel winning this year’s league title?I am very happy that it happened in my first year with the team, is great I have made history with the club. What will you say made the success story possible?Prayerful, hard work, discipline, dedication and perseverance were the keys that saw us to where we […]

How do you feel winning this year’s league title?
I am very happy that it happened in my first year with the team, is great I have made history with the club.

What will you say made the success story possible?
Prayerful, hard work, discipline, dedication and perseverance were the keys that saw us to where we got to this season.

How will you describe your one year stay in Kano?
Very tough but I thank the Almighty God for everything that it ended with a very good result

What made it tough?
Everything, the environment, communication, the game itself and adaptation.

After one year stay in Kano, what can you say concerning the place and the people?
The place is fantastic; the fans are a bunch of great patriots.
The support of the fans pushed us to always want to excel to satisfy them.

What is your candid assessment of the league this year?
It was good, there were a lot of improvement but there is still space for more improvement.

Which areas do you think need improvement?
There is a very high need to improve on officiating in the matches and the welfare of the players and the coaches, the NFF and LMC should ensure only people with good characters are allowed to officiate in matches whether in the premier league or any other league in the country.

You are not new to CAF Champions League assignment, what are the expectations from Kano Pillars in the championship next year?
Early preparations and we are going to be focus and continue with the hard work to meet the aspirations of the fans and the people and government of Kano state and Nigerians in general.

Are you thinking of beefing up the team ahead of the continental assignment?
Naturally the recruitment of players is a continuous exercise you cannot stop looking for the best legs to fill the missing links if there is any in the team, if you are not satisfied with what you achieved you definitely have to go into the market to strengthen your team.

The worry of most Nigerians is that the league may not start before the kick off of the continental championship, what are the plans by Kano Pillars to make up for this gap?
It is a very difficult job, is quite true that the season has just ended and is the same thing that happened this year, the league here don’t start on time and I must tell you it affects the performance of the clubs in the continent that is the reason they fizzled out this year and if we continue like this it may not augur well with us in the country as far as performance in the CAF competitions are concerned.
Our prayers in Pillars is that we hope the authority approve our request to train outside the country as well as play top club sides in friendly matches to put the players in match fit position for the continental challenge.
The training tour will give us the avenue to work together and have better understanding of ourselves in a very conducive environment devoid of distraction from relations or the preying eyes of the press but if it is not possible for us to travel out of the country, this is our country we can not run away from it, we will look for somewhere we can get the best out of the players and play more friendly matches with club sides that will give us a good ground to have a proper assessment of the team. I will pray also that the LMC start the league season before the kick off of the continental assignment.

Do you see the possibility of the management of your club renewing your contract?
Well I am at home here in Kano but if the contract does not work out, life goes on and I will move on with my life because the world is about moving around but the most important thing is to have a very stable environment to work

The poor turnout of fans in our match venues is something that call for concern as a coach how do you see this ugly trend?
It is a thing of concern, looking at LMC and the way they are going about the league, there is a lot of improvement and I hope they will continue to look forward to sensitizing people to start watching our matches here instead of this craze for foreign leagues, most of us here can not say much about Enyimba or Kano Pillars but if you ask them of the foreign leagues they will tell you the latest in the clubs and the profiles of their players.
I see LMC replicating that here with their publicity and all that, they still need to do more with the clubs also providing the platform to make their teams popular with their performance which I believe will bring back the fans to the stands.

Are you in support of a foreign coach for the Super Eagles?
Well our not qualifying for the nations cup is not a good thing but the most important thing is how come we have many players in our country and how many of them are in the national team but you have your foreign based players who are bench warmers in their various clubs displacing players who play weekly in our league in this country, is our problem as we turn our back against our players who can take their place in the national team because of name of the clubs their foreign based counterpart sits on the bench.
We have the talent if we have the facilities to train the players though with what we have if the coaches are given an enabling environment we will get back what we have lost in the shortest possible time.
Take a look at what the South Africans did, they have been having foreign coaches and when they decided to stick to their own one can see the results they are getting from the experience, treat our players and coaches well the motivation will do the magic, you can not compare the way things are done in South Africa with what we do here. I was opportune to work in South Africa and I know my monthly earning compared to what I get here. There are good coaches in Nigeria all they need is adequate motivation. 

The issue of officiating like you said is one area that is a problem in the Nigerian league, how do you think things can change?
Most of our match officials or referees take this officiating as their job but if you take for instance what happened outside the shore of our country, you will see all the referees are all professionals in where they are working but here you will find out that some of our match officials do not have any job except to officiate, so how do you want them to earn their living, that is our bane unless we promise to make sure that whoever that is involved in our matches is doing well in their chosen career we will remain were we are and is going to be very disastrous.