By Ben Efe

Former Super Eagles coach and presently Nigeria Football Federation technical director, Shuaibu Amodu has insisted that Nigeria professional league players are not good enough to be in the Super Eagles team.

Amodu who was coach of the Eagles to the Nations Cup 2010 in Angola, had blacked out the home-based Eagles as he sensationally declared that they were no material for the national team. Amodu won third place in Angola the standard performance for the Super Eagles at the nations cup and he was subsequently replaced by Lars Lagerback for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
However, coach Stephen Keshi seemed to have proved Amodu wrong as six players from the local league formed part of his winning team to the 2013 Nations Cup in South Africa.

“ I still remain with what I said then about our local league players. If I am confronted with the same situation I will still say the same thing.
“What I said was that they were not good enough and that is true. Potentially they are good, but they are not good enough. At that stage if we were to rely on them, we would have blundered.

“This is because the home league was not blessed with very capable coaches that will bring the boys to that level where they will play at the nations cup or world cup. For any coach to work with them, he has to camp them for months and take them through different competitions for them to attain that standard. I did not have that opportunity during my time because the matches where so close and we were working with the boys from Europe,” Amodu said.

He argued that Keshi had the opportunity to work with the home-based players and was able to bring them to his level.
“I commend him for working with them. Some other coaches could have had the opportunity, but they wouldn’t  have done much,” Amodu said.