Sports Briefs
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AMAJU Pinnick, president of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, is understandably unhappy with Sunday Oliseh, Nigerian Super Eagles’ coach, over his Youtube rant, which he described as a distraction.
Oliseh, while reacting to calls for his dismissal as national coach, following the Super Eagles’ early exit at the Rwanda 2016 African Nations Championship, on Sunday, February 7, in the video, attacked his critics in the media and his former teammates in the Eagles.
Irked by Oliseh’s statement, Pinnick, who spoke in Youtube interview posted on the NFF handle on Thursday, February 11, lamented that the rant had caused so much division in the football house.
According to the NFF president, the outburst was needless and has constituted a major distraction to Nigeria’s build-up to the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Egypt.
Pinnick said: “Actually we received a letter from Mr. Sunday Oliseh, apologising for his outburst, which was quite needless, quite unnecessary and rather very unfortunate. It’s not just about receiving a letter of apology because a lot of people were hurt, a lot of people are very upset about his outburst, which they feel is a major distraction considering the fact that we have a major two-header against Egypt; one of the top teams in Africa.
“So, it’s not just seeing a letter of apology and accepting it; now we need to make some repairs, make some fence-mending. We need to talk to various stakeholders that were directly or indirectly affected by his ranting, for example, the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria.
“So, we need to appeal to SWAN, we need to appeal to their conscience, we need to make them understand that it is all about Nigeria. We need to appeal to the Technical Committee, they’ve done a thorough job. They wrote a simple letter requesting for a report and the (Oliseh’s) response was rather appalling. They feel so slighted, they feel so hurt and of course they feel even betrayed by us, so we need to appeal to them.”
— Feb 22, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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