New Super Eagles handler, Sunday Oliseh, has revealed that coaching the Nigeria national team is a difficult task, because there are not a lot of top quality players available to him.
The former captain of the team, also admitted that he had initial doubts about accepting the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) offer, to manage the former African champions.
“To coach Nigeria is not the easiest job in the world and one is only as good as the players,” Oliseh told the FIFA website.
“Nigeria at the moment has a lot of potential, but we don’t have a lot of confirmed players in the top clubs in the top leagues, so taking over the national team now means we have to remake the whole team and introduce a new philosophy of playing style, of culture and mentality.
“That is very difficult to do when you are the national team coach because you have very limited time with the players unlike when you coach a club. So that is why I was very hesitant.
“For some years now, there have been offers and discussions about me taking over. It has been on the table, but it has not yet happened because the timing was off.”
Oliseh stated that he was encouraged by the massive support he got from Nigerian fans to take the job.
He added: “When I came into Nigeria to have talks, I came out of the airport and I knew there was no going back because all the way from the airport, my countrymen where saying: ‘You have to take the job, you have to take the job.’ So I did.”
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