Amuneke Laments Bad Take Off of Eagles

Former Super Eagles star, Emmanuel Amuneke, yesterday expressed disgust at the performance and the result that followed the barren draw of highly rated Nigerian squad against the Mambas of Mozambique at the Stadio Mashava arena in Maputo. The result leaves Super Eagles two points behind their main rival, the Carthage Eagles of Tunisia in Group 2 where the two are battling for the single ticket. The North African side, 24 hours earlier, had secured a 2-1 away victory in Nairobi over the Harambe Stars of Kenya.Reacting to the game, Amuneke said: “I do not think I will be able to recover from the shock in the next few days. I was so optimistic Nigeria will triumph but the reality of what Nigeria has on ground as regards our football potentials are beginning to manifest now because the so called minnows seems to be catching up on us. And they seem to be doing it at an astronomical speed. Still, many of us who are staunch believers in the team see this one poor result as temporary set backs.“The Mozambicans today (yesterday), appear to be more determined to win, while our players seem to be content to sit back to see what their opponents were capable of doing. In the process, the home team dominated play while Nigeria relied on creating the one-off and occasional chances to score. And those came in trickles. In fact, they hardly came except the near sitters that Obafemi Martins and Ike Uche had.“I know many people will want to crucify the coaching crew but beyond that, we have to face the reality; and that is that what we saw in that match was the unconscious accumulation of lack of developmental program that will lead to discovery of abundant talents from which the coaches can choose from.“We are deficient in quality players the likes that made this country proud in the past; that have made us truly the giant of Africa.“We used to have players of real quality that did in previous generations made Nigerians to be proud of their national teams. Players that did this even before my set, which made the debut at the World Cup finals in USA in 1994, came around.“We must not try to blame Coach Shaibu Amodu, or the players. I think they did their best and all we need to do now is to encourage them in subsequent rounds. Yes, we have had a bad start, but we can still make it. In fact we will make it. There are still plenty of matches to go.“Let me remind that in our campaign for the USA ’94 ticket, we lost our opening match of the final round of qualifiers to the Elephants of Cote d’ Ivoire in Abidjan. The match ended 2-1. But we went on to win our next two home matches 4-1 convincingly against the Ivorians and Algeria and picked the vital draw away in Algiers to book the ticket to Nigeria’s first Finals.”Amuneke still lamented the fact that the away win for Tunisia would no doubt give them a vital psychological boost and that it would definitely make them to aim to continue the wining streak, even against Nigeria when both meet this June at the Rade Stadium in Tunis.“I admire the position of the Tunisians because the away win coupled with Super Eagles’ misstep on this Day One of the Qualifiers will definitely give them a psychological advantage.”Nigeria will host Kenya in Abuja in June on the same weekend Tunisia will host Mozambique. The two top draws of the group would then meet at the imposing Rade Stadium. The reverse fixture comes up in Abuja in the next round of matches.