SUPER Eagles' former assistant coach, Fatai Amoo, and Lagos State Commissioner for Sports, Wahid Enitan Oshodi, have chorused that a total overhaul would be the way out of the problems affecting Nigerian football after the unexpected exit of the Super Eagles from next year's Nations Cup.Like a seer, Amoo believes that Nigeria's elimination the 2012 Nations Cup should serve as a wake-up call to those in charge of football in the country. A furious Amoo told The Guardian yesterday that it was sad that despite Nigeria's pedigree in world football, it could still not make it to Equatorial Guinea/Gabon African showpiece next year.'I want to say that the problem of Nigerian football is beyond the Nigeria Football Federation, coach Samson Siasia and the players,' he said. 'It is something that needs to be addressed by all, especially in the area of developmental programme.'From what happened on Saturday against Guinea, it is now clear that Nigeria's problem is not coaching because when Shaibu Amodu was in charge, people were saying he was the problem. After him, the same thing is still re-occurring. So I will agree that sacking Siasia will help our teams. But what we need to do is to look at the problems in our local league.'We have a league that is not working and is unattractive as we most times rely on foreign-based players to prosecute most of our matches. People also queried Amodu when he said there were no materials in the local league. How many local league players have come through under Siasia' We should know that the problem of our football is within and we should look critically into it for us to move forward.'Like Amoo, Oshodi said the problem is deeper than sacking Siasia. According to him, 'we should look at the problem holistically rather than believe that sacking Siasia will solve the problem.In the last four years, we have not had a team that its performance has been convincing enough and all these can be blamed on lack of good structure.'We need to start addressing the issue of age cheats among our players. We should start thinking of youth developmental programme where we can have players that will progress from youth team to the senior team.'The Lagos commissioner added: 'How many of the Flying Eagles players can you remember where they are now, or even some of those that represented (us) at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Korea that have come through the ranks. It is either they are playing in obscure leagues in Europe or retired early because they are hardly the age they said they were.'So all these need solutions. Also, our league, which is over a year now, has not ended; this is also not helping our football. So sacking a coach will not bring the needed solution. We just need to look at the problem holistically and fashion a way out of this for us to get back on our feet again.
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