The national U-15 football team Head Coach, Haruna Ilerika, has expressed confidence that Nigeria’s Super Eagles would put up an impressive performance in the remaining Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Ilerika also said the team would further gel better before World Cup qualifiers resume.
Speaking to Blueprint in an exclusive interview in Abuja, the experienced grassroots football handler told Super Eagles technical adviser Gernot Rohr to take another look at the players plying their trade in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) in a bid to include them in his team’s formation.
He further appealed to Nigerians to reinstate their trust in the team after a not-too-impressive show against the Leone stars of Sierra Leone.
According to him, “I want to believe things are not going to be the same any longer. All those matches have helped us to put more effort to play better.
He had the opportunity; he took us to the World Cup before we lost to Argentina. In the game of football, one will win, and if you look at the games we played in the World Cup, they weren’t bad.
“All we need is to allow Rohr to be focused and be dedicated to his job. I will appreciate it if he can look inward; get one or two players from the local scene. I’m an advocate of local players. There are some departments of the game that local players are very useful.
“Across the world, you can’t do away with your local team because playing with the local league is the morale booster that everybody is looking on. For you to have a tremendous achievement your league must be standard and that is when two or more are playing in the national team that is how you can build up quality players.
“With the last two games that we have played against Sierra Leone, most especially the one in Benin, from the technical point of view it can happen to any coach and national team in the whole world.
“People are looking at it from an angle of a spectator. But as a coach, it is painful and unacceptable, but it can happen at any time in the game of football.
“Brazil has lost 7:1 in front of their crowd before in a semi-final of a world cup.
It has never happened before, for a Brazilian football team to lose with that long margin, where people believe football originated from.
“No coach wants to lose a game. Every coach wants to be celebrated. The achievement in football as a coach depends on how a national team is playing, it is unfortunate that we did not do well in Benin. The effect of COVID-19 is also a factor. The national team has been inactive for some time.
“The national team is going to rise beyond what we are thinking of. The coach needs to listen more to his employer and be rededicated, refocused and know that he is a problem solver. He has to make do with some things. So many people castigated him because of his choice of players. The truth is when you are building a new team for a world cup, it is natural you give opportunities for one or two.
“If the one or two gel, we would all be clapping for Rohr. Since they are failing, it is natural that we crucify him. It is in the line of his own duty that he is doing what he is doing. I am sure that with the two games, lessons have been learnt.
“I’m sure that the Super Eagles would gear up in their next games. We are going to see more of a standard Super Eagles that is more consistent than what we saw in the last two games. The last game in Freetown wasn’t a bad one.
“A coach should not be killed because his team failed. It is a mistake. I’m sure he is not happy and he is trying to make sure that such a mistake does not happen again.
“The higher authorities have spoken and I’m sure the players have spoken to themselves. We are going to qualify for the nations cup.”
