Former captain of the senior national team of Nigeria John Obi Mikel has given his opinion on the possible reason why the senior national team of Nigeria failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.
Mikel retired from international football after the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations where the team finished with a bronze. He is also close to retiring from football after leaving Kuwaiti side Kuwait SC.
Back in Nigeria for a charity event, Mikel took out time to speak with Nigerian journalist Femi Solaja in an interview which was published on the electronic version of Nigerian news outlet Thisday.
Asked on why he think the Super Eagles didn’t make it to Qatar after losing the play off to Ghana on away goal rule, he narrowed it down to a lack of true leader in the team.
“I was busy with my kids putting them to bed before the match and at match time, I searched all the channels and could not pick it and I had to rely to monitoring online. It was really painful that we did not qualify because it’s been a long time, we experienced non qualification (Germany 2006 finals)”, he said.
” It was strange and felt really sad because I can’t imagine watching the FIFA World Cup without Nigeria and it’s even more painful to lose the chance of qualification at home. It is strange and I just hope we have learnt some lessons by looking forward to the next four years. I remembered the last edition in Russia when we even qualified with almost three matches to the end of the qualifying round of matches.
“We were motivated, we had a direction on the pitch we had a leader on the pitch. All the 11 players were listening to only one man on the pitch not many leaders in the pitch. We need a leader on the pitch for others to follow. You don’t need five leaders but just one because when you have four or five people giving instructions on the pitch that it not a unit”,he concluded.
