Former coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Sunday Oliseh has sensationally claimed that he is partly the reason why present coach of the team Gernot Rohr is enjoying success at the helm.
Oliseh left his post unceremoniously close to two years ago, leaving the Nigeria Football Federation ( NFF) with no option than to replacing him with Samson Siasia in interim capacity based on the nature and timing of his departure.
The Super Eagles ended up not making it to the last African Cup of Nations, and it was the second time in a row that the team have failed to qualify for the showpiece they won in 2013 in South Africa.
Franco-German coach Rohr was appointed same year, and under his guide Nigeria qualified for the World Cup with a game to spare in the qualifiers, and since he took over the Eagles have only lost once, which was the 0-2 loss to South Africa in the AFCON 2019 Qualifiers tie in Uyo.
His success as the coach of the team according to Oliseh is down to largely the job he did as coach of the team, as he is responsible for blooding established stars in the team now like of Alex Iwobi, Moses Simon, Wilfred Ndidi , Kelechi Iheanacho and Shehu Abdullahi.
He claimed the team was weak when he took over as coach in 2015 until he introduced the aforementioned players into the squad upon his appointment as coach of the team in place of Stephen Keshi.
“One of the first things I did when I got the job was to bring a lot of young blood in because the team itself was already on the wane,’” Oliseh said in an interview monitored by Owngoalnigeria.com.
“Players like [Alex] Iwobi, I brought into the team, I gave him his first call-up, and some others who had been side tracked like Moses Simon. I brought them in and pushed them up.”
Ade Emmanuel
