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To Break Into National Team
It has been a thing of disaster and complaints from many Super Eagles fans regarding the way National team coaches keep dissing the local players in the Nigerian Professional Football League, NPFL.
The last National team coach who trusted the home-based players was the late Stephen Keshi and they repaid his trust. There were six and the wonders they did has not been matched to date. They are Ejike Uzoenyi and Chigozie Agbin (Enugu Rangers), Reuben Gabriel (Kano Pillars), Godfrey Oboabona (Sunshine Stars), Azubuike Egwuekwe and Sunday Mbah, both from (Warri Wolves). The latter was the reason the Eagles proceeded to the finals because of his heroics against the Elephants of Ivory Coast in the semi-final. He went on to score the only goal against Burkina Faso as Nigeria clinched their third African Cup of Nations, AFCON dramatically.
Since then, one of the three goalkeepers has been picked, notably Ikechukwu Ezenwa.
In 2020, Gernot Rohr, then Super Eagles Technical Director, after criticisms from the media said that the home-based players will always find it difficult to make his squad because they are not good enough. “It’s difficult to play NPFL players because their foreign-based counterparts are better.
“The problem with the good players in the local league is that they don’t stay long enough before moving to Europe,” he said.
When asked why he does not pick enough players from the local league, Rohr said: “Because they are not good enough and because I have better ones. There are so many good players in Europe.
“I have invited more than 20 local players since 2016. If they are good, sooner or later they’ll all end up in Europe,” he added.
In his defence, Super Eagles Chief Scout, Tunde Adelakun, said that the NPFL players are not considered when the senior national team coaches invite players to camp because there is no means to assess their performance regularly online.
He said: “It was difficult for him to monitor players in the Nigerian league from his base in the United Kingdom because the games do not have visuals online that his team could critically study before recommending players to Rohr.
“Scouting for players overseas is easy for me because there is a special software device I use to track Nigerian foreign-based players’ performance online.
“Any Nigerian player that is doing fine in Europe, if I get his contact and data, I use the device to watch his clips and study his performance. After this process, if I am satisfied, I will recommend it to Rohr and he will also assess the player before taking the step to approach the player in his base.
“I have tapes and recordings of so many Nigerian players doing well abroad. But the NPFL is a different matter. The league matches are not online, so it is not easy to use the software to watch a particular player’s performance.
“It is not that there are no good players in the Nigerian domestic league, but there needs to be a process to monitor a player’s performance in his club constantly,” he said.
Super Eagles striker, Jonathan Akpoborie in an interview with Scorenigeria on why NPFL players lack national team call ups, said that it’s because the league lacks quality players, stressing that the death of grassroots football is the reason as there is no real hunting ground for the Nigeria league clubs as it was in the past.
“In the past, there were lots of grassroots football competitions which served as hunting grounds and talent development for clubs to get players. Players moved from secondary school to play for the clubs because there was a very strong Principal Cup in the country, producing young talented players.
“That needs to be revisited for the game at home to improve. If you look at the Super Eagles for some time now, it is hard to see players that played in the Nigeria league team as regulars, most of our players in Europe were picked from.
“I have played at the top level in Africa, played in the Nigeria league, played at the top level in Europe and I have learnt how football is managed. Just like coaching, you must have the talent to do it, I have the talent in management and that’s why I want to bring that to help Nigeria football grow as it is supposed to be,” he urged.
Former Enyimba striker Mfon Udoh has claimed that some home-based players lack respect from both the managers and foreign-based counterparts because they beg foreign-based players for money while in Super Eagles camp.
Udoh claimed in October 2023, while speaking on The Abu Azeez Podcast, hosted by former Beach Eagles star Abu Azeez. He said that most of the foreign players, when they see the local players like us tend to look down on us, they look at us like who is this? Even 90 per cent of them I have played in the Super Eagles before them, just because they have been consistent in terms of getting invited they feel they own the team.
Udoh who has the record for the highest number of goals scored in the NPFL in a single season and also the first player to score over 35 goals in two consecutive seasons in Nigeria, said that the foreign players look down on them because they believe that they won’t break into the team.
“We are all footballers but because we are in Nigerian league it’s very difficult to break into the main Super Eagles, so all those things make them look down on us.
“And because we don’t have money and the home-based when they go there (camp) and because they earn like N100,000, N600,000 and they see who is earning N10 million, N20 million or N30 million, they go and start begging them for money. So because of that, they don’t like to talk to us, they just give us space, he said.
Before the last AFCON in Côte d’Ivoire, former Super Eagles head coach, Jose Peseiro included just three domestic-based goalkeepers in Nigeria’s provisional list of 41 players and later cut it down to just one, Olorunleke Ojo, who plays for Enugu Rangers in his 25-man list that came home with silver medal.
Ebi Egbe, one of the country’s facility experts, said in an interview with Thisdaylive in January, that the trend will continue under foreign coaches hired by the NFF until clubs in NPFL choose to do the right things by elevating their playing surfaces.
Egbe who is the CEO of Monimichele Limited, one of the best stadium turf experts in Nigeria, stressed that it will be difficult for the local players to make the senior national team because of the level their talents have been reduced to by the poor surfaces they play on in the domestic League.
“I swear, in the next 15 years, it will be difficult to see our local players making the senior national team as we have seen over the last couple of years, “said Egbe.
He said that it was sad that the highest scorer in the NPFL could not make the provisional list of 41 drawn up by Peseiro.
“The coaches will always rely on the foreign legions because they play on the latest surfaces in Europe thereby elevating their games. It is only an indigenous coach who is used to the bad pitches here that will look in the direction of our league players.
“Any wonder now that instead of our players leaving Nigeria to play in top teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Arsenal, Manchester City etc, we end up seeing them in other African leagues in Egypt, Sudan, and even Uganda and those who succeed to reach Europe are playing in backwaters leagues not better than what we have at home but having better facilities and remuneration,” he said.
He, however, counselled Nigerian football fans to stop accusing the foreign coaches of not giving playing time to players from the domestic league. “Stop blaming the foreign coaches. There is no way our local players can make it. See the provisional list released this week. All the three players from the league here are goalkeepers,” Egbe concluded.
It is recalled that Stanley Nwabali, who was the revelation at the last AFCON in Ivory Coast with stellar performances which helped propel the Super Eagles to the final where they lost to the home nation 2-1 was snubbed by NFF during the reign of Gernot Rhor.
A former Vice President of the NFF Shehu Dikko said that the Chippa United shot-stopper was on the radar of the national team. “Nwabali has always been on the radar of the National team. I recall in June 2019 during the NPFL Super Six in Lagos and he was on the books of Enyimba FC, we invited Gernot Rohr to watch him as a potential successor/competitor to Uzoho.
“Unfortunately, his club GM went to inform him that Rohr was around to check on him thinking he was helping him but that made him so jittery being a young keeper just getting into the grove.
“But he has always been a very good keeper as he even made the NPFL Allstar team in 2022 for the Budweiser match with John Terry and Roberto Carlos and the home-based Super Eagles match with Mexico in the USA.
“Anyway, God’s time is always the best and he has once again proved the talent available in the domestic game,” Dikko wrote on his X handle.
Meanwhile, some still believe that the home-based players should be given a chance like how former coach, late Keshi did.
One of them is former Nigeria international Garba Lawal who believes the NPFL boasts of quality players capable of challenging for a place in the country’s senior national team.
“The NPFL is fantastic. We all came from the local league – I started from the amateur league to the National League.
“In three years, we’ve established ourselves. From Kaduna, I was taken to Lagos where for two to three seasons played with Julius Berger.
“I’ve watched the NPFL very well and I think there are good players here
“Whenever our coaches, especially foreign ones, see a player born in Europe, they always want to go and bring him, I think he needs to keep monitoring him gradually before he decides to bring him. That’s if they want to play, then if they do not want to play for Nigeria – there is nothing he can do.
“He should concentrate on getting some players from the local league and I believe he can get some talents that can fit into his style of game. I believe with that; the sky is going to be the limit,” said.
By Benprince Ezeh
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