Disdains Nigeria’s football setup, local players, and management
By Rasheed Adewuyi
Super Eagles technical adviser, José Peseiro has been accused of operating with bias, lack of respect, and harboring unhidden disdain for Nigeria’s local football organizations, leagues and players, and for even openly vowing never to invite them again to the national team.
This was after the Portuguese trainer led a Super Eagles selection of mainly local based players to North America for a friendly encounter with Mexico and was handed a merciless whooping by the Mexican national side in Mexico.
Rather than blame himself for his poor tactical knowledge, Peseiro rather chose to blame the very tools he chose to perform the task,” a highly placed source in the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) disclosed to Sports Joust in a recent interview that.
“Afterwards, for all Peseiro cares, any home based player might as well be as good as Messi or Ronaldo, or both combined, but as far as he is concerned, such a player will never be good enough for him ”
According to the source, Peseiro refused to listen to his goalkeeper trainer Ike Shorunmu and assistant coach Finidi George, to hand Rivers United FC goalkeeper Victor Sochima, a chance in his first game in charge of the team, after Francis Uzoho’s and Maduka Okoye’s unforced goalkeeping blunders had largely contributed to deny Nigeria in an Afcon quarter final qualification match in Cameroon and the qualification for the 2022 FIFA World Cup tournament that was held in Qatar last year.
“Go check all the previous players invitation lists under Peseiro after the Mexico friendly and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Peseiro didn’t invite any home based players for all the friendly matches he prosecuted as the national coach after the match in Mexico” our source said.
A review of Peseiro’s previous team selections revealed that the Portuguese featured only foreign based players in all the matches he has played since he assumed duties except against Mexico.
The Portuguese has also lost all the friendly matches he’s been in charge as coach of the Super Eagles, which involves matches against Mexico, Ecuador, and Algeria, and has only managed to win competitive games against a minnow like Sao Tome & Principle as well as mid-level Sierra Leone.
Sports Joust also gathered that goalkeeper Sochima, Kingsley Aniagboso (Giants Brillars), and Daniel Bameyi ( YumYum FC), all of whom were invited for the Nigeria versus Guinea Bissau match benefitted from a well calculated NFF directive mandating Paseiro to include a minimum of three home based players in his subsequent Super Eagles invitations going forward.
This communique, Sports Joust has gathered, was the direct response by Peseiro’s current employers to checkmate his obvious bias and apathy against local Nigerian players’ inclusion in his future team selections.
