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Sports News of Saturday, 20 March 2021

Source: www.today.ng

Only players playing top leagues should play for Super Eagles - Sunday Oliseh

Sunday Oliseh Sunday Oliseh

Former Super Eagles coach, Sunday Oliseh, has suggested that only the best players playing their football in top leagues across the world should be invited to play for the Super Eagles.

Oliseh, who spoke to Channels Sports yesterday, expressed concerns that the criteria for invitation to play for the national team was nothing to write home about, saying a lot has changed since his time as player and coach of the team.

“The demands that we have; the qualification that you have before you can play for the Super Eagles; the bar has been reduced.

“We as a nation are now happy with mediocrity. We celebrate even third place in Africa. When you are Nigerian, you are the best. You don’t celebrate even a second.”

“That is why when I coached Super Eagles, the first thing I told them was ‘If you are not playing in the first division anywhere in the world, forget Super Eagles’ because the best has to play here,” the former Eagles captain said.

Oliseh also lamented that the Super Eagles team is currently short of top players playing the best of football at the moment with the exception of Leicester City’s Wilfred Ndidi.

“We don’t have a lot of top players playing at the top level at the moment. In fact, the most solid player we have now is Wilfred Ndidi because he has got a lot as a player,” he noted.

On the decision to bring the 2021 AFCON qualifier against Lesotho to Lagos, Oliseh said, “You have to be at your best to play there. there is an advantage to it. The advantage to it is that you always bring your ‘A’ game when you come to play for Nigeria and you know that you have to play well and it is not a luxury playing for Nigeria; it has to be an honour wearing the green white green.”