Nigeria U-23s head coach, Samson Siasia, has stated that his team has not showed any encouraging sign ahead of the Rio Olympics.
The former coach of the senior national team however said that his team learnt a lot from the four-nation Suwon Invitational Tournament in Korea Republic, after his boys ended the tourney with a 3-1 win over Honduras on Monday.
Monday’s win was Nigeria’s first after a 1-0 defeat to Korea and a disgraceful 6-2 loss to Denmark.
Siasia who admitted in his post-match press conference that the experience in Korea was overwhelming also disclosed that he has a number of players in mind to fortify the team, but he will not disclose their names now, because he has not been able to confirm if they will be available for the Games.
“I’m happy we are not going back home pointless,” Siasia said at the post-match conference. “The most important thing is that team officials and the players have learnt a lot from this tournament which we will take back home to start making our corrections.
“The best thing that has happened to this team is that due to results at this tournament, we have heard Nigerians criticizing us, we thank them for all the negative things they have been saying about us.
“These have served as motivation for us, we have realized the areas that we need to improve on and those players that we need to inject into the team to make up a very strong team going to the Olympics.
“The biggest problem we are having right now is that we do not defend very well; we create several chances but do not convert them. So, we need to make changes in those areas for us to move ahead from here, we have other games coming up too in America. After making those changes we will see how well the team will look going to the Olympics.
“I don’t see any plus right now, I only saw players that are not fit enough, that’s the biggest problem we had. The change of weather actually affected the few ones that we trusted to play well, most of them faltered, so that’s a problem, and we need to address these things in a hurry.”
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com