Nigeria missing AFCON a second time consecutively is unfortunate

A sport analyst, Tayo Balogun, says it is sad that the Super Eagles will be missing from the Africa Cup of Nations tournament for the second time.

Balogun told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Friday that Nigeria did not deserve this.

NAN reports that the Super Eagles were knocked out of contention for a slot in the Gabon 2017 AFCON in spite of having one more match to play in the qualifiers.

The withdrawal of Chad from the qualifiers did not help matters for Nigeria because the points gained from Chad were deducted by CAF.

By virtue of the development, the Super Eagles will not be able to qualify as the best loser from Group G.

“We competed against Egypt in crisis and in such a situation anything can happen. The players individually tried their best, but again no coach ever gets it right all the time.

“Luck was what we needed in the match, but unfortunately we didn’t get it, but the Egyptians did.

“If we fail to plan, off course we must plan to fail. The result we got is equivalent to our level of preparations,” he said.

Balogun said that the moves being made by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to hire a foreign technical adviser might not be a solution to the problem.

“The clamour for a foreign coach seems to be the next move, but I must categorically say it that the problem is not the coaching, but the situation on ground.

“The problem is about the NFF that does not know its onions and precisely what to do.

“I mean you employ a coach and both parties have a binding agreement, am referring to Sunday Oliseh and while the contrat is on, they were contracting another coach to take over his job.

“Oliseh got wind of it and opted out; he did what any other person would have done,” he said.

The analyst, however, urged the NFF to put the AFCON loss behind and pay more attention to the forthcoming 2018 World Cup.

“World Cup eliminations have already started and countries have been preparing for it. We have a whole lot on our hands if we want to make it to the tournament.

“The NFF should proffer solutions and not mistakes which have caused us many embarrassment and missing out from tournaments consecutively.

“By now we ought to have learnt from our mistakes and shouldn’t be making more of such mistakes,’’ Balogun said.