The heat is on Eguavoen
To add insult to injury the Falcons another up till now true constant in Nigerian Football, left their best player off the team and promptly lost the Olympic 2012 ticket after being beaten by Cameroon. This brings us to the sad fact that Nigeria’s only remaining competitive team as I write remains Eguavoens U23 Team […]
To add insult to injury the Falcons another up till now true constant in Nigerian Football, left their best player off the team and promptly lost the Olympic 2012 ticket after being beaten by Cameroon. This brings us to the sad fact that Nigeria’s only remaining competitive team as I write remains Eguavoens U23 Team in Morocco . It goes without saying that all of Nigeria is now praying that this Dream team will not add to the ongoing nightmare and salvage the country’s pride by securing what the Falcons did not. Like I said Eguavoen is under unprecedented pressure and he knows it.
Always a realist he admitts that his charges are in a tough group for the tournament especially as many of his true stars will be MIA.
Lukman Haruna and winger Ahmed Musa have been denied permission by their European clubs. Odion Ighalo, Nnamdi Oduamadi, Rabiu Ibrahim, Anthony Ujah and Ekigho Ehiosun will also not be released. Citing him one can only feel his frustration when he says “I’ve given it my all but the reality is that these players are not going to be with us in Morocco,”.
The difficulty in bringing most of his European stars for the competition as it falls outside Fifa’s international match calendar which means clubs are not obliged to release players, is imense but the Coach has certainly tried racking up his frequent flyer miles by the ton. As he says”I travelled all around Europe to beg clubs to give me Nigerian players but with no luck.”
However it is what it is and the Coach seems to have accepted this when he says. “Other teams too will not have their best players available so we just have to live with it. We have to respect the players that are here because they all merit the opportunity to represent Nigeria.” Despite the alarm bells now being raised from Morroco by Assistant Coach Eguma who complained to SuperSports in an earlier report by saying “We are currently facing some difficulties.
The host federation has been employing a lot of negative antics to destabilize us and we have been facing a lot of difficulties with the weather,” no excuse will be enough to justify not grabbing one of three slots for Nigerians.
For the Coach and players never has the writing on the wall been clearer, the pressure more pronounced and the opportunity to redeem the collective pride of a nation in despair been so obvious. In the last six weeks his team has supposed to have taken shape and morphed into a viable force especially in camp in Ghana. The time has now come to produce because as the song goes “the heat is on” and I mean really “on”.
Culled from SuperSport.com