The Chief Coach of the U-23 Eagles, Samson Siasia, has lamented the absence of the Super Eagles at the ongoing Equatorial Guinea 2015 Africa Nations Cup has made the tournament boring to him and many other Nigerians.
Answering questions from Daily Sun sports when he stormed the secretariat of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), the World Cup Coach, maintained that the absence of the Super Eagles killed the interest of many Nigerians in the tournament, noting that many Nigerians don’t even know that AFCON had resumed.
“Honestly, I feel that there is no Nations Cup in the first place. It is even obvious because most Nigerians are not even watching it. The absence of the Super Eagles has killed the interest of many Nigerians from the tournament.
“Honestly, it has been boring without the Super Eagles participating,” he lamented.
The former Super Eagles chief coach also spoke on the traveling arrangements for the Dream Team’s forthcoming training tour to Tunisia, saying: “We are going to leave the country on Thursday to Tunisia for the double-header match on January 24 and 28. We will return to Nigeria on January 29 and hope we can get sponsor or if the National Sports Commission will sponsor us to Turkey to play more quality friendly games ahead of the qualifier game against Gabon.”
On the possibility of dividing his team for the Tunisia friendly and the Super Six in Abuja, Siasia said: “We are seriously working on dividing the team into two to help us participate in both. We want to make sure that the right players are in the right position.”
“We will make sure that we disabuse from the minds of the players the issue of superior or inferior into the division of the players. They all know that we have not gotten the regular first team players and they all know that we are still working on how to build a team,” he noted.
While siting late resumption of camping as one of the biggest challenges facing him, the Nigeria former international however noted that he does not want to dwell on negatives, stressing that he is rather concentrate on things that will make the team move forward.
“I don’t really want to talk about challenges now. What would have been the challenge was the late resumption of our camping. We did not just come back on time but now that we are back, I don’t want to talk about negative things. We are going to do the best we can to make the team better,” he quipped.