19th March, 2015
Former Super Eagles’ coach, Bonfrere Jo has described the planned return of Stephen Keshi as the chief coach of Nigeria’s senior national team as a bad omen for the team.
To Dutchman Bonfrere Jo, the attempts to return Keshi as coach of the Eagles will only further improvise a side that’s lost its respect on the continent as well as in Europe.
“The situation is not good, not in the past when Keshi was there and certainly I don’t think it’ll improve if he returns. Nigeria doesn’t command respect football-wise in Africa and especially not in Europe anymore.
“The players don’t get to play for top sides or even get good deals there, it’s a sign of the downturn and this is really sad,” Bonfrere Jo told Brila FM early today.
He, however, painted a gloomy picture of the state of Nigeria football, predicting doom and that these are very dark days for the Eagles. He described the situation of Nigerian players struggling to make an impact in Europe as a testament to his verdict.
Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Uganda will play Nigeria next week in an international friendly, local soccer body, FUFA, confirmed on Thursday.
This is coming as a replacement for the botched match against Bolivia which was put up due to security reason as claimed by The Bolivian Football Federation [FBF]
“The Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) would like to confirm that the national senior team- Uganda Cranes – will play a friendly match with Nigeria on Wednesday 25 March, 2015 at the Akwa Ibom International stadium,” reads in part a statement on the Fufa website.
“We are happy to have this friendly match on Fifa designated match dates. It is a high profile match for our team as we plan for the forthcoming international engagements,” said Fufa Chief Executive Officer Edgar Watson.
Uganda and Nigeria last squared it out in 2007 in the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. Then, Uganda won the Kampala leg 2-1 and lost 1-0 to the Super Eagles away in Abeokuta.
Both teams will use the friendly to tune up for the 2017 Nations Cup qualifiers that start mid this year. \\Stand-in Coach of the Eagles, Daniel Amokachi has defended his decision to hand Nigeria Professional Football League players’ call-ups for the forthcoming friendly against South Africa later this month.
Amokachi posits that Nigeria is one of only three countries with the largest pool of talents, and he believes they’ll come good.
“ Talent-wise no doubt, I think Nigeria is blessed no doubt, I’ve always said it. If we talk about talent we would readily mentioned Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria in the world, no other country produces talents like these three.
“So you can’t say our league doesn’t have stars, everybody came from the league. I pencilled down about eight players from here and these are players I don’t even really know, so that tells you how much quality we have who can work with the coach and take instructions.”