The former head coach of the Nigerian National Team, Super Eagles, Adegboye Onigbinde, has backed Samson Siasia to say he should not be blamed for the National team’s failure to qualify for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon.
The elimination of the Nigerian National team followed a 1-0 defeat to Egypt on Tuesday in the return leg of the double-header in Alexandria.
Onigbinde in Siasia’s defense said: “It is quite unfortunate that we eventually lost out of the qualifying race. But I will say that the loss to Egypt was not lost on Tuesday, it has been in the offing decades ago.
“Siasia and his boys should be absolved of any blame for that loss because there was nothing they could have done in that match. The system has consistently failed in our developmental programmes, thus we continue to insult Nigerians’ sense of patriotism.
“When we pin our hopes on only the overseas-based players to win matches for us, we should expect such results. Our opponents have good developmental programmes and they are reaping the benefits now. They only included few exceptional overseas-based players in their team.
“I think anyone that decides to blame the coach and players for the unfortunate result are not being fair. The team tried their best and did well except for a few lapses that could be corrected but we should really go back to where the problem started and correct them.
“If we don’t learn from this and correct the foundation, we will still have more of this kind of results and bad outing. The World Cup qualifiers may not be too different except we begin adequate plans to correct the faults that have been there for a long time”
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