BY JACOB AJOM
Super Eagles assistant coach, Silvanus Okpala is excited that the Nigeria Football Federation is arranging many international friendly matches for the national team, but would be happier if more African teams could be made to play the Eagles.

Speaking on the impending friendly with Brazil at the weekend, Okpala told Sports Vanguard that he was excited by the fixture which will pitch the Eagles against the five times world champions. He said, “it is good that we are going to play against them in Abuja. Brazil is one of the best in the world.

“Apart from Brazil, we have a number of matches lined up against the likes of Peru, Gabon and others. But I would prefer a situation where we take on more African teams. It will help our cause in our bid to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations and ultimately the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.”

The former Nigeria international said the rebuilding process was on track as the team was still at its fledgling stage. “We played our first competitive match against Rwanda and earned a draw.

It was not a bad start. The Rwandans are no pushovers. The Super Eagles had played Rwanda before and all had ended in draws. Although I won’t like to discuss that because the match is history now, we cannot forget the lessons we learnt from Kigali.”

He said the technical crew decided to make a mix of both home-based and foreign based professionals. “And it was very revealing. The home-based we fielded distinguished themselves.

This is not condemning the foreign based because they too did their best under the circumstances. It was clear that  they could not blend as a team because of lack of time.

But Victor Moses was simply fantastic. We missed three scoring chances after his introduction. He had a fantastic international debut.”