By Kate Obodo
Former Super Eagles striker, Etim Maradona Esin and midfielder, Friday Ekpo have pointed out the need to start the rebuilding of a new senior national team following the poor outing of the present squad at the on-going 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Etim

Esin, who expressed disappointment over the Eagles unimpressive outing said the time has come for the country to start rebuilding the team in order to get a solid team for future competitions. According to him, this can be achieved if the team is overhauled with young players both from the grassroots level and from football academies.

He also criticised  the idea of short-term contract for coaches and advised football authorities to consider long-term for coaches as it will go a long way in stabilising the team

“It is so unfortunate that we are still confronting the same situation. After spending much on both the players and coaches, at the end instead of getting much from them, they turned around to pay us with poor performance. It just shows that we do not have a team that will represent us in competitions like this.

Now that we have failed, we should go back to the basics and see how we can make amend in order not to repeat same situation next time. This can only be possible if we inject young players in the team. We have a rich pool of talented players who are hungry for honour. We can get them from various academies, grassroots level and even our local league.

Also we need to start planning on long-term coaching and not a short-term like we just as we did with Lars Lagerback. Anything we want to do should begin from now,” Esin said

Ekpo on his part blamed lack of investment in indigenous coaches and  young  players for the Eagles poor performance, adding that the country has stopped producing big stars that could compete in world events like the World Cup.

“We need to go back to the roots and see how we can make amend and better our team. Most especially we need to invest on our local coaches, no foreign coach can change our system. It is only by investing more on our local coaches that we can go far.  There is also the need to inject young and vibrant players into the team,” he stressed.