Daily Independent Online.
*
Monday, July 26, 2004.
‘Super
Eagles need psychologist not coach’
By Uzor Odigbo
Correspondent, Lagos
The heir of the
Premier of old western region
Victor Akintola has told anyone who cares to listen that the problem plaguing
the Super Eagles was lack of competent psychologist and not a coach.
Akintola who bared
his mind on issues plaguing Nigerian football wondered why the NFA thinks that
the country’s problem was lack of competent coach. The sports enthusiast
advised that NFA urgently look for
a psychologist who would help the present coach do his job very well. “
If you ask me, I feel the man there is doing a good job, the only thing they should help him
look for is a psychologist that would talk to the players by way of identifying
their individual problems and change their psyche to play well”
“When Nigeria
beat Ireland and Jamaican teams which coach handled the team, who were the
players involved.? When Rwanda was defeated in Abuja who was the coach and did
he import players who played the game.”? Look! We don’t need any foreign coach all
Nigeria’s national team require now is a psychologist. A psychologist
will tell a coach the players that are well tuned for any particular match.
Nigeria lost the Angola match not because of technical deficiency but because
no one helped to psyche the players on how close they were pulling a drew as
against a determined Angolan side. Which coach would have played well in the match
against Algeria with players that were off-form.
An accountant by
profession, Akintola told Daily Independent that why Nigeria
always call for a new coach was because the coaching crew are not complete. A
national team where the coach was hired to do every job would always run into
trouble, he however regretted that a situation where coaches are the ones that
carry the can was not healthy, adding that players also contribute to
team’s poor performance especially, when they are well talented and could
not lift their performance in a particular game, he said.
