Eagles don't deserve to be at AFCON – Aiyegbeni

9 years ago

Eagles don't deserve to be at AFCON – Aiyegbeni

Out-of-favour Nigeria striker Yakubu Aiyegbeni believes the Super Eagles lack the quality to be at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations starting in Equatorial Guinea on Saturday.

Nigeria failed to qualify for the tournament after losing the tickets to South Africa and Congo in the last qualifying round.

But Aiyegbeni, who last featured for Nigeria at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa where he infamously missed a scoring chance against South Korea in one of the group games, told our correspondent that the faulty rebuilding process in the team cost Nigeria the opportunity to defend the title they won in 2013.

“Nigeria didn’t deserve to be at the Nations Cup because we didn’t get some things right during the qualifiers. Other teams playing at the tournament deserve to be there because they worked for it,” the Al Rayyan of Qatar striker said.

“I think the team is gradually taking shape again after the misfortune of not qualifying for the 2015 Nations Cup. They had their chance to win and qualify but they couldn’t, so they have to go back to the basics and check what went wrong.

“These days, Nigeria believe in rebuilding the team every year. In other countries, they still have the older and experienced players. In Nigeria, if you play for nine years, people think you’re too old to be in the team; they’d say you have been there for too long and they need younger players, even though you play regularly at your club. But we have to stop that mentality if we must be consistent at the top.

“(Andrea) Pirlo is 35 and is still playing for Italy, he’s still one of the best players in the world. Ivory Coast still have some of their more experienced players still playing in their national team, even though they’re rebuilding the team. Same with England, where players like (Steven) Gerard and (Frank) Lampard inspired the younger ones in the team before they retired. You can’t just push the experienced players away like that and expect to build a strong team overnight.

“It’s not enough seeing a player score a goal at his club in Europe and you think that’s enough to earn him a place in the Eagles. I don’t even know some of the players in the Eagles these days, they just bring anybody from anywhere. But we have players who feature regularly for their clubs in Europe and America and were never called up to play. That’s how bad Nigerian football has become.”

He said the major problem in the Eagles is the strikers’ inability to score during crucial games.
“We have to believe in our strikers in the national team. Some strikers can score goals more easily than others. Sometimes, it is more difficult to score goals in the national teams than in the clubs,” the former Everton player said.
“Back then, when we had players like Jay Jay Okocha and the rest of them, they created chances for any striker to score easily. But at the moment, we don’t have any creative midfielder who can create such chances. This is the reason the strikers are struggling to score.

“You can’t compare the current Eagles squad with the one that had Finidi (George), (Tijani) Babangida and (Sunday) Oliseh. That team remains the best Nigeria ever had. The current team will continue to build every day because it’s difficult to get the right talent.”