Nigeria goes into Sundays game against Gambia hoping for the victory that would take it to the semifinal of the on-going African Youth Championship (AYC), as well as the FIFA Junior World Cup. But four of its outstanding players are nursing injuries, leaving the team with 14 fit players. In this interview with ADEYINKA ADEDIPE in Johannesburg, Coach John Obuh assures that his players would deliver the World Cup ticket despite the setbackExcerpts:I noticed that todays (yesterday) training session was intense; was it because of Thursdays loss to Cameroun, or is it how you have been training the teamNo, when you have a match in three days time, you dont expect us to come and jog or do light training because we still have another day to prepare more for the game. Even if we had won the last game, we would still train this way because the competition is definitely getting tougher.It is clear that you have injury concerns in your team, how do you hope to manage this since you already have three players outYes, but we are going to use the ones that are fit, though we will still have to wait till the final hour to the game to see if some of them will pass the fitness test. We would use the strikers in the defence if need be. I will not be the first to do it and I know we can win. What the players need to do is put their mind in the game and translate their heart desire to action.The next game on Sunday is at Millpark, have you seen the pitchWe will definitely see the pitch before the game but the organisers will not allow us train on it before the game against Gambia. But we dont need to play there to be sure of what we can do on Sunday. But I was told the pitch is smaller. However, I hope we can go there and win our game.Coach, you are playing a Gambian team, which also has a chance to qualify, and their coach has said they would approach the game as if it was the final; what do you make of this statementThe man has said what he will do but the game is like a smaller person playing a bigger person. The smaller persons victory will make bigger headlines but not so if the bigger person won. Beating Gambia will not be news to us but we are confined to beating them because we are looking for qualification. Also, I am not going to say what we are capable of doing but our players are feeling better than they felt against Cameroun and if they translate that feeling to action on the pitch, we will surely come out victorious.Wing play seems to have failed your team, how do you hope to improve on thisI must admit that the problem against Cameroun did not come from the wingers. The wingers opened up for passes but the passes didnt get to them. Some of the players we depended on did not perform well and that affected the team adversely leading to the loss. We expected them to hold the ball, which they didnt do, and also passed the ball to the opponents most of the time. But we will correct this before our next game.What are you telling Nigerians, who eagerly looking forward to this crunch tieI would still urge them to have confidence in us despite the setback against Cameroun. My happiness is that from the calls I have received and from the press, it has always been very positive, that means they believe in us. I will just pray that the boys come out the way they did against Ghana. The first game we played was an excellent one and it is as if they wanted to make it their best. But now they must better their performance against Ghana to beat Gambia and qualify for the World Cup.Are you under any pressure going into this gameDefinitely, I am under pressure because I am ambitious and I want to excel but it would not cause a distraction or lose of concentration.
Click here to read full news..
