My players suffered stage fright ' Eguavoen

National U-23 team coach Austin Eguavoen has attributed the teams failure at the CAF U-23 Championship in Morocco to stage fright.The competition serves as the qualifiers for the London 2012 Olympics football event and will produce three teams that will represent Africa.Eguavoen said the players prepared well for the competition but developed cold feet in their first game against Morocco and failed to adhere to the game plan.He said, "There was pressure playing against the host team but the players made it worse when they allowed the big stage to overwhelm them. Some of them had not played at that level before."They said they were scared and jittery. They have to explain that because we trained them well."We managed to psyche the players up after the game but they displayed the same naivety against Senegal. It was then we realised they had to grow with the competition, but the Algeria win was not enough for us."The team were without notable players like Ahmed Musa, Nnamdi Oduamadi and Haruna Lukman who featured at the preliminary stage but Eguavoen, who has since resigned from his post after Nigerias ouster, said their absence was not responsible for the teams failure."There were nine key players that were not in that team but thats not an excuse. The players in Morocco were part of the team from the beginning; we only added two new faces like Jude Aneke and Odah Onoriode," he said."The problem we had was that the players failed to take their chances. There were opportunities for us in those games but we missed them. One major thing they lacked was tactical discipline."
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