The Sun News On-line

Super Eagles’ Chief Coach, Shaibu Amodu, has risen in defence of the exclusion of home-based players in the national team, arguing that he cannot work outside his brief.
Amodu has severally been criticised in some quarters by those who alleged that he has nothing to offer the nation again having coached the Super Eagles before.

Besides, those critics argued that the non-inclusion of home-based players in the Amodu-coached Super Eagles could spell doom for the country during the Nations Cup finals in 2010.

But the former Sharks of Port Harcourt tactician has dismissed those insinuations with a wave of his hand, insisting that nobody would make him derail in his quest to lead the Eagles to the Promised Land.
The Edo State-born football tactician further spoke on the Super Eagles’ attackers, the Nations/World Cup qualifying matches and others. Excerpts:

Super Eagles’ attackers surprised many by scoring two goals against the Nzalang Nacional of Equatorial Guinea in their second leg encounter in the Nations/World Cup qualifying matches. But before then, it was the defenders that were scoring for the team. So, can one say that the attackers have woken up to the challenges now?

I didn’t know that I was criticised for having a team where the attackers were not scoring goals. If there was any criticism like that, it must have come from you, the pressmen, and I cannot react to that. The important thing is that we have been winning and we are now heading for the 2010 Nations Cup in Angola. Whether it was the defenders that scored in our matches or the goalkeepers, it does not matter at all to me. I have a job to do and I have to do it. I don’t expect people to close their mouth, let them continue to speak, when they speak something good, I learn from it, but on the contrary, I throw it into the thrash can. That is exactly what I have been doing.

Concerning the teams the Super Eagles have played so far, I think you pressmen are the opinion moulders. Most times, you have informed Nigerians the way you look at the games. But from my view as a coach, I think we have played about four matches, won three and drew one. So, as for performance, I believe we have had good games so far. The number of goals scored in those matches may not count, because all I needed was to win and that we achieved.
But I think we have so far seen a rejuvenated team, which can really play entertaining football. We may not have entertained to the best of our ability when we played against the Nzalang Nacional, because we started on a rough path. And when you start on a rough path, what you need is to manage victory to bring confidence into the team.

I think the team are gradually regaining confidence and it would be better in our subsequent outings. We expected a very strong opposition from Nzalang Nacional. They are good. They can hold the ball very well and besides, they knew that if they lose that match, they would have lost their chance of qualifying for the Nations Cup in Angola. So, based on that, we expected a stiff opposition from them.

Before you came on board as Super Eagles’ boss, a lot of people had written you off, saying that you had nothing to offer again to the senior national team. What do you say to this?

Well, for those who said that I had nothing to offer to the national team, you can now write and tell them that I really have something to offer. But the fact remains that it is not for me to react to such talks. I stated earlier that I have a job to do and I am doing just that. I don’t care about my critics.

For the three remaining matches in the World/Nations Cup qualifying series, are you promising Nigerians that you will feature at least one home-based player?

Football has rules. We submitted the names of 50 players to the authorities in charge of football, which the press widely publicised. But I’m shocked that people still ask if I would field home-based players in our remaining matches.
Before we drew our list, we invited 57 players beginning with the friendly against Austria. We said then that we would prosecute all our matches with the players we have in that list. And we have just done that.

Someone had asked if I would bring in more players into the team and I said I could not react to that until we make a postmortem of all the games we played, that’s the time we would know the next thing to do. We are working according to plan and we wouldn’t want to be stampeded into doing something else. We are focused. Picking the World and Nations Cup qualification tickets are uppermost in our minds. So, as we work towards achieving those goals, we continue to unveil our other plans.