Former National U19 volleyball player, Pascal Ozokoye has expressed his excitement after representing Nigeria at the recently concluded 13th African Games in Ghana.
Nigeria lost to host Ghana 1-3 in the men’s quarterfinals played at the newly constructed Borteyman Sports Complex in Ghana.
Ozokoye in a chat with www.aclsports.com said the country possesses fantastic individual players but the synergy of a team is missing.
He said the current crop of players can make the country proud if they remain intact ahead of subsequent international championships.
The former Plateau Rocks player said, “It was an honour to be called up to represent the country, especially now which was a very young team though we were not complete, apart from the few senior players who played at the African Games.
“I was hoping we could do more. I believed we could have ended up with a podium finish but it is what it is. We are a young team and if we remain together in the coming years, it would be a different story.
“We should have had a different game plan with different patterns. I think that’s what we should have done before the African Games was to have other strategies incase our plan does not work out. If you noticed all the matches we lost, you will discover we drop momentum when we are in a tight situation, head to head or when we are about to round up; I think we should adopt scientific patterns in our senior national teams”.
The Odbojkaški klub Niš player further said, “It is high time we work more on our tactical side. I am talking about playing as a team and individually. We need to have a plan, we need to go back to our drawing board and think about what we need to do at certain times.
“I noticed that at some point there are some mistakes and errors we make which if converted it would have increased the momentum of the team. All of us are great individual players but we need to work more on the team and know our strengths and weaknesses.
“Volleyball is changing so I believe we need to change a lot of things especially our system of play,” he added.
