Former head coach of the Super Eagles, Adegboye Onigbinde, has said that current handler of the team, Samson Siasia, should not be blamed for Nigeria failing to qualify for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon.
The Eagles lost 1-0 to Egypt on Tuesday, in the reverse fixture of their double-header in Alexandria. The result meant Nigeria trail the Pharoahs by five points with one game left for each country.
Onigbinde said: “It is quite unfortunate that we eventually lost out of 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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