Former Super Eagles player and coach, Sunday Oliseh, has given reasons why his former national teammate, goalkeeper Peter Rufai, struggled after retirement until his death.

Rufai, popularly known as Dodo Mayana, died on July 3 at the age of 61 and was buried on Friday, August 22, 2025.

Shortly after his burial, a former Eagles teammate, Taribo West, granted an interview in which he lamented the neglect Rufai suffered despite serving Nigeria.

West's lamentations were slammed by many Nigerians who recalled the huge salaries and bonuses received by his colleagues from Nigeria and foreign football clubs they played for. According to them, footballers should never go broke after earning such salaries.

However, Oliseh shared a different perspective, saying footballers only play and earn for a few years, stressing that the earnings won't be enough to cater for the long period they have to live after retirement.

He said on his podcast, "How come players, in spite of what they are, go broke afterwards? If you are lucky as a footballer, you play football till the age of 35. Except you are one of these extraterrestrials that we have now, which are Ronaldo and Messi, who can play up to 40.

"If you play your career till 35 and then you retire at 35, and God allows you to live up to 70 or 80, you still have about 45 years to live. How much would you have earned for you to be able to cater for yourself on a monthly basis?

"Rufai died at the age of 61. He stopped playing football 25 years before. Now, if you multiply 25 by 12 months that he had to go through before God called him up to heaven, you are talking about 300 months. That is 300 months that the man had to cater for himself, his kids, his wife and his family and friends. How much must he have earned to be able to do that? That's almost impossible.

"That means that for Rufai to be viable, to survive and be a dignified human being after retirement, he needs to somehow have some form of employment. The only form of employment this man can get is on the football field. The football field in Nigeria is dead. I used the word dead because we have become a nation where our national team is even being beaten by Sudan, a country that is at war. We were beaten not 1-0 by Sudan, we were beaten 4-0 by Sudan."

ASA