Enyimba head coach Finidi George has finally lifted the lid on issues surrounding the club’s 4-0 aggregate loss to Wydad AC in the African Football League (AFL).
In an exclusive interview with selected journalists, the former Super Eagles winger opened up on some of the internal issues that left the team with no chance against the continent’s biggest clubs in the AFL.
Here are some of the excerpts from the Nigerian football legend.
On Player recruitment and squad quality
“At the level of the AFL, you must have a strong squad to stand any chance. We lost our top scorer (Emeka Obioma) and our highest assist provider (Sadiq Abubakar). We also lost so many other top players whose experience would have been needed in the AFL. But nothing was done to replace them right.
“We didn’t have any business losing many of those players, maybe apart from Emeka Obioma who had some big opportunities abroad.
“Sadiq (Abubakar) and Fatai (Abdullahi) were willing to stay, but the club did not show seriousness in keeping them. You don’t lose such players when you are preparing for a competition as big as the AFL.
“The current Enyimba team for the season can only compete in the NPFL and not on the continent. We are not at the level of Wydad. We have to focus on the league. We didn’t replace the players who left adequately.
“Out of 19 new players that were brought in, I had knowledge of only 4 of them. When I saw the quality of the players that were brought, I called Ekwueme the Sporting Director and asked what the target for the season is, he said it is just to stabilize in the league as the focus is to settle down first.
“When you bring in players that have no history in the league and did not even perform well in their previous clubs or anywhere to a top club like Enyimba, how do you compete with a club like Wydad which has national team players and a lot of players that have played in Europe and competed at highest level? We don’t have the squad to compete at such level.”
Issues around player registration
“Ideally, before registering players for any competition, the coaches must be consulted to submit the list. But that wasn’t the case here. For whatever flimsy reason, we were not consulted and they did the registration themselves. As a result, some of the players we would have needed were not registered. It was much later that the sporting director just sent us the list of players that they had already registered.
“After the first leg, they dropped some players from travelling for the second leg in Casablanca, claiming that they couldn’t get them visas. We had to protest it strongly before it was rectified. We later found out that there was more to it.
“Can you imagine that we went for such a game without the goalkeeping and fitness coaches? Myself and Yema were the only coaches that travelled for that game. That is very strange to me.
“Everyone has to put the interest of the club first because until this is done, we would only be joking.”
On the general internal disorganisation
“We arrived Uyo on October 17 with the idea to have as many training sessions as possible on the grass pitch in Uyo since we are more used to our synthetic pitch. But we couldn’t really achieve that because the management failed to make the right arrangements with the stadium authorities. As a result, we improvised and had one of our training sessions at a primary school, while another training session was cut short because of the same poor arrangements.
“In fact, we played a team that was more used to the playing surface than us, the home team. It was obvious that we were at a disadvantage as a team used to artificial pitches and this really affected us.
“Also, we had only three trainings with the AFL match ball, meanwhile, our opponents had enough time to get used to it. That was why you could see my players struggling with their control, passing and shooting.”
Let’s all blame the coaches then
Last Friday, a haphazardly written press release purportedly from the club’s media department stated that the management, led by Kanu Nwankwo had warned the coaches and players over what it termed “abysmal performances in recent times.”
The warning passed the blame for the club’s misfortunes chiefly on the coaches, led by Finidi George, with a subtle threat to “take necessary measures if things don’t improve quickly.”
For Finidi however, the club’s issues are beyond the technical crew and all hands must be on deck to move the team forward.
“It is sad to see such statements being released when all hands should be on deck and things should be more organized to enable a positive environment for all. Yes, there have been issues, but I remained patient because I believed that we could harmonise efforts and work things out; but here we are.
“The issue with the team is obvious, and it has nothing to do with the coaches. The same coaches won the league with less goals conceded and highest goal scored. We won the best Super 6 ever organized, scored the highest and conceded the least number of goals,” concluded the 1994 AFCON and 1995 UEFA Champions League winner.
Finidi will lead his Enyimba players out when they face Niger Tornadoes in a Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) Match Day 6 encounter in Kaduna on Wednesday. The team would still be on the road to Kaduna by the time you are reading this in what is a 48-hour road plan, barely 24 hours after arriving in Aba from Casablanca, Morocco.
