By Onochie Anibeze
Ex international Kingsley Onye said yesterday that the performance of Mikel Obi and Osaze Odwengie was so bad that they could be singled out as causing Nigeria’s ouster from the Nations Cup race.

”In football, technical people don’t always single out players when a game is lost but the Saturday match in Abuja was glaring. Osaze was a shadow of himself and Mikel was bad, very bad on the pitch. I was thinking that if Osaze would play he would have come from the bench because he had not been playing for the team since his suspension.

Mikel was part of the drama before the qualifier in Madagascar when he, with Vincent Enyeama and Victor Anichebe, protested against flight plans of the Football Federation and delayed the chartered flight by hours. And this time again he came late to camp and when fined he said he would not pay. So, I thought that Samson Siasia would bench the two of them.

We must know that the players today are no longer as patriotic as players of the past were. They played as if nothing was at stake. Osaze and Mikel, in my estimation, played against Nigeria.”

Onye’s remark came after Kashimawo Laloku was so disappointed about the team that he kept wondering what happened to Osaze. He was still shocked.

”There’s another way to discipline. We missed Enyeama. Siasia should have used him and fined him. For Osaze, I still can’t imagine why he was so awful. He was bad. Was he playing a revenge game? Was he against the team or trying to revenge over his suspension? I really don’t know.”

Laloku, a former national coach and now Director of the Pepsi Academy displayed the account number of the Federation in which he would have paid in N50m Pepsi promised the team if they qualified for the Nations Cup.

”How can players know that they would share such big money and other and they would be walking on the field?