Three Nigeria Premier League (NPL) coaches have heaped praise on Super Eagles’ interim head coach, Austin Eguavoen, for showing bravery in naming 15 home-based players in a 30-man list for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Guinea.
Enyimba coach, Okey Emordi, is pleased with the change in attitude to the call-up of players by the national team selectors.
Emordi is, however, taken aback that his club has five players in the 30-man team, which he describes as reason for the Peoples Elephant’s dominance of the Premier League last season.
“I must say that Eguavoen is a brave man for picking half of the team as local players. It is good for the league, and I must say I am also happy that Enyimba has the most players in that list, which shows that the national team selectors are following the happenings in the league,” said the former African Coach of the Year award winner.
Kano Pillars’ gaffer, Salisu Yusuf, believes that Eguavoen has taken the right step in naming as much as 15 NPL players for the camping exercise for the trip to Conakry to face Guinea in an AFCON qualifier on October 10.
“He has done a wonderful job in giving the home-based equal chance of fighting for places in the national team. This is what the local players need to boost their confidence rather than run them down because we have some very good players,” Yusuf, a former Lobi Stars’ man told SuperSport.com.
Assistant coach of Crown Football Club, Godfrey Esu, believes that Eguavoen has shown bravery by taking the bull by its horns where former Nigerian coach, Shuaibu Amodu, refused.
“Eguavoen has shown that he is not afraid of trying the home-based unlike Amodu, who gave little or no chance. I believe that Eguavoen must have learnt from Amodu’s mistakes and that is why he has named equal number of players for both foreign and locally-based players in the team,” Esu said.
No comments:
Post a Comment