Why I almost resigned as Pillars Technical Adviser – Ganaru
How did you start your football and coaching career?I started like any other Nigerian player. From secondary school, I played a lot of YSFON and academicals competitions. Then later I played for El-kanemi Babes. Later in my career, I played for El-kanemi Warriors. However, I resigned prematurely because of injury. From there, I attended the […]
How did you start your football and coaching career?
I started like any other Nigerian player. From secondary school, I played a lot of YSFON and academicals competitions. Then later I played for El-kanemi Babes. Later in my career, I played for El-kanemi Warriors. However, I resigned prematurely because of injury. From there, I attended the National Institute for Sports, NIS. At the completion of my coaching course, I joined El-kanemi Babes coaching crew. From the junior team, I was promoted to the senior team. I joined Pillars from the 2008-2009. This is my fifth season in Kano Pillars.
Once again, Pillars FC has dropped to the second position on the table. How confident are you that your team will retain the league title?
As you can see we are still on course. We are now second on goal difference. All hope is not lost. We are doing everything to try and come back to our top and see that we maintain that position to the end of the season. I believe we are on course.
How motivated is your team to realise this dream?
We are fully motivated. As you can see by yourself, we are not lacking anything. Recently, we were rewarded with cars and cash for last season’s achievement. I want to tell you that that award will motivate us to do more.
What can you say is responsible for Pillars recent dip in form?
Well, I think we have some problems that I do not want to open up here. Apart from that we lost some of our key players to injuries and some to national assignments. Though pillars is not built around any single player, sometimes when you lose seven or eight of your key players, it is something that will affect your team. I think we are still on course.
Are you not under pressure now that Pillars is struggling to get results away from home?
The pressure is everywhere in football. Everywhere in the world, if you are not getting the right result, pressure will always be there. I don’t think we are doing badly. Even as we are losing away matches, we are not doing badly. Since the league started, we are either first or second. Like I said the issue of pressure is everywhere. The expectation here in Kano is very high because of the high number of fans. We have a lot of followers and they expect a lot from us. That is why when you are not doing well, you expect such pressure.
At the end of last season, you made moves to leave Kano Pillars. What happened?
Success is good. When you are doing well, definitely you must have other clubs coming for you. It is not only one club that came for me. I had invitation from about three to four clubs. After that I handed over everything to God that he should make a choice for me. God chose Pillars for me and that is why I am still here. I am always proud being the head coach of Kano Pillars the defending champions and currently on course to win the title back to back.
You just said Pillars is one of the best clubs in Nigeria but like last year, this year’s finals of the Federation Cup will be played without Pillars. What is wrong?
To be sincere with you, our ouster from the Federation Cup is a surprise to us. We really worked hard. We wanted to win because if you look at the history of the competition, we have not won the trophy. We did everything to win but that is how God wanted it. Honestly, it was not our day because we did the playing and they did the scoring.
Is it true you said Pillars lost to Warri Wolves due to fasting?
That is not true. I don’t know where that story emanated from. Before that match we played about four matches with fasting and we did well. Our FA Cup matches against El-kanemi and Gombe United and one league match were won with fasting. Why should I then complain when we lost against Warri Wolves. I do not know where that one came from. I have never said anything that we lost because of fasting. We are used to playing with fasting. My boys play even better during fasting.
You recently survived a ghastly motor accident. When it happened did you think you were going to die?
Yeah, I felt I was going to die. We just have to thank God for everything because after I regained my consciousness and saw the picture of the car, I just have to thank God for everything. If you see the car, you won’t believe that some people came out of that car alive. I thank God for everything.
Out of the matches you have lost this season, which would you say is the most painful one ?
The loss against kwara United in Ilorin is the most painful. That 3-0 really pained me. I even wanted to resign because we had lost to Enyimba 3-0, lost to Warri Wolves 2-1 and the next away match we lost to Kwara United 3-0. I said why 3 3 3? I even made up my mind to resign because I had done everything possible to win. If you look at last season, we hardly lost away matches. We lost nine away matches on penalties. It was either we were winning or playing draw, and in the dying minutes, the referee would awarded penalty against us. I then asked myself why is it that this season we are losing 3-0, 3-0, 3-0 away and every pressure will be on the coach, coach coach, coach. The coach cannot go into the field and play. Sometimes the players must believe that they are the main actors and they must do the job. However, when you lose like that everybody blames the coach. That defeat really pained me.
Which match would you say is your best this season?
The best match I think we played this season is our CAF Champions League match against AC Leopards of Congo. That team was really rated highly. You know they are the defending champions of the CAF Confederation Cup. So they were rated very high. But when we played them, I never expected such result. We defeated them 4-1. I was very happy with that result.
Would you say the Nigerian league is still blessed with lot of talented players?
Yes, Nigeria has a lot of talented players. The only problem we are having here is I think lack of patience. We need to give young players enough time to develop. Unfortunately, everybody expects that when you bring a player from the street, he must perform that very season. In Europe, a player is developed two to three years. We do not have patience to develop players in this country. There are no developmental programmes. So I am appealing to managements and supporters of clubs to give us enough time to develop players.
What is your candid assessment of the Nigerian league this season?
Yes there is remarkable improvement. Some of them still make pedestrian mistakes but they are human beings. There are good ones among them and there are also bad ones. But you can see improvement because you see few away wins which is encouraging. However, there is still room for improvement.
But what has impressed you most about the league this season?
We have to appreciate the efforts of the league management committee because the season has not witnessed so many postponements. We are following the fixtures as arranged. This means if nothing goes wrong, we would be able to finish the league as scheduled.
If you were to advise the league committee what would you suggest should be done to make the league better?
This issue of congested fixture is a serious challenge. Playing mid week matches is taking a great toil on the clubs. I hope that next season, they would try and avoid this congested fixtures. We have to start in good time so that we play only weekend matches. Mid week matches are hectic. You do not have time to re-group and train in order to make corrections. You travel, come back, do only shake up and play the next match. The following day, you do shake up for like thirty minutes and take off the next day. There is no time to rest. You play and travel, play and travel. I am appealing to the league management to sit down together and get a permanent solution to this. They should start the league in good time so that we don’t over stretch the players and clubs’ finances. This congestion of fixtures is killing clubs and players.