"You cannot coach the Eagles from Europe". Christian Chukwu tells Oliseh

Ex Super Eagles coach, Christian Chukwu has advised the national team handler, Sunday Oliseh to leave his Europe base and spend more time in Nigeria. He stressed that being in Nigeria will afford the ex international the opportunity to build the team better.

"The first thing that Oliseh should do is to reflect on how he was discovered and brought into the Super Eagles as a player from Ju­lius Berger FC of Lagos. What he is doing at the mo­ment with the national team is short a term plan where he will just call up players from around Europe and get them to play for the national team."

" As a former chief coach of the Super Eagles, the truth I need to tell Oliseh is that he cannot coach the Su­per Eagles from Europe. He should take his mind back to how he was discovered and go back to the roots. He should develop both a short term plan and a long term plan.

"The short term plan is what he is doing at the mo­ment by calling up players for matches from different parts of Europe. The prob­lem here is that the player who is scoring every week in his club may get to the national team and fumble. The simple reason is that the player already has an under­standing with his other team mates who knows his every move. Same will not be the case in the national team until they get used to each other."

"Oliseh needs to take some time off in Europe by coming back home and go­ing to match venues to see things for himself. That's how he was spotted and brought into the national team from Julius Berger FC of Lagos. The likes of Fri­day Ekpo, John Ene Okon, Friday Elahoh, Daniel Amo­kachi, Uche Okechukwu, David Ngodigha, Peterside Idah, Ike Shorunmu and many more benefitted from the same system.

"He cannot depart from the system because these are the only set of players that he can camp as long as he wants and impact his own pattern of play into.

"Players he identifies over a period of time based on their consistency week in week out are the ones he can put together and inculcate in them his own style of play that will differentiate him from others before him. The reason most players run to Europe is simply because only foreign based players are given preferen­tial treatment sort of. The players in the league don't want to spend time in the domestic league because they no longer believe that they will get the same opportunity as their foreign based counterparts. So, if Oliseh builds the nucleus of his team around the domestic league players, he would get the desired result in no time."