The reason behind the failure of the senior national team of Nigeria to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar has dominated discussion as the tournament reaches the semi final stage, where Morocco are the only African team in the last four.
Morocco made history by making it to the last four owing to their 1-0 win over Portugal in the quarter final and they will face France in the last four after their 2-1 win over England. The performance of the Atlas Lions has no doubt provoked discussions about the Super Eagles.
Recently, a senior player in the team Leon Balogun talked about vodoo as probably the reason why they failed to beat Ghana in the playoff but another player in the team said it’s far from it. He instead said the problem was the internal fighting among the coaches.
Nigeria went into the two legged playoff game with Austine Eguavoen as the interim technical adviser with Emmanuel Amuneke appointed as head coach to help the crew after their round of 16 exit at the Africa Cup of Nations.
It appears that move backfired spectacularly as a player who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the coaches were caught up in a power tussle on who is ahead in the set up.
” There was no proper definition of who is ahead of who. The hierarchy wasn’t spelt out properly. A coach will say we will play this way, another will say no play this way. Many people are not aware that we had two separate lineups for the return leg of the playoff against Ghana”, he told OwnGoalNigeria.com.
” We trained in a particular way but on matchday we played in a different way. We didn’t even know what was going on. Players who we thought should start were on the bench . It was chaotic. Our coaches worked against themselves and the nation at large”, he claimed.
