Ex-Super Eagles coach Sunday Oliseh has once again made startling revelations about his time in charge of the team.
Oliseh resigned in February after only months in charge, citing poor working conditions and unpaid entitlements.
The former Nigeria captain used his blog, SundayOliseh.tv to reveal
more details about his experience working with the Nigeria Football
Federation, his relationship with senior players like Vimcent Enyeama
and Mikel Obi, and his disagreement with the technical committee and how
he almost died from the stress of working with the NFF.
In a long piece titled “My Recent Near Death Experience As Coach Of
Nigeria, Oliseh held nothing back, even criticising the Nigerian media’s
coverage of his time in charge of the Super Eagles.
“One day whilst coaching the super Eagles in Abuja stadium prior to
the Burkina Faso game I all of a sudden felt dizziness, light
headedness, headache and could barely stand,” Oliseh narrated. “I
managed to finish the session before calling on the doctor into my room
who was clueless to what was happening.
“From then on it was sleepless nights, loss of appetite, high blood pressure and before I knew it I started losing weight.
“After several visits to doctors abroad nothing was found though the
doctors found anomalies they couldn’t pin point the actual illness to.
“Prior to the away trip to Burkina Faso for the final CHAN qualifier
game in Port Harcourt after lunch I was struck with the worst feat of
this illness again. Could not walk, talk, dizzy and felt like I was
going to pass out.
“I quickly demanded to be rushed to the airport and with the evening
flight travelled to Germany to see specialists .After 2 days of nonstop
tests I was diagnosed to have narrowly escaped a total collapse in
Nigeria.
“For weeks I was bed ridden, lost 7 kilos and could barely walk 5
metres without sitting down. My family was petrified and all feared the
worst. One thing was for sure though: had I not taking that evening
flight to Germany when I did, there was a strong possibility of a far
worse outcome. Thank God for his mercies.
“All through the last 4 months of my tenure as coach I was far from
my complete healthy self and coached the team and stayed in my bedroom.
Often on my bed or sofa.
“Imagine how betrayed and pained I must have felt with the lack of
support at these life threatening times from my employers the NFF and
the shady pressmen who made it a duty not to report the gravity of the
illnesses that befell me and my assistant to the Nigerian people and
kind of like wished us the worst!
“On the day I put in my resignation letter I was still far from my
best health wise and I guess it is better staying alive than getting
embroiled with these people who have no interest of Nigeria at heart.”
Oliseh added: “A day after the Late Stephen Keshi was relieved of his
duties as coach of the Super Eagles of Nigeria, I got a phone call from
the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) offering me the job which I
immediately rejected. The call lasted just 2 minutes!
“I was to further refuse the offer twice again in the next 2 days
that followed as they kept on calling. Their argument: With the new
president Muhammadu Buhari in place, the Nff was ready for a change and
was abandoning their old ‘Shady’ ways!
“It took the intervention of a phone call from a highly ranked
federal government official for me to budge. His point was simple “your
country is in dire need of your services and the NFF promised me a
change, put your terms in writing and if they do not accept it, let them
go elsewhere”.
“Which is what I did and we all eventually signed a working
agreement. Thus began the adventure to coach the Super Eagles of
Nigeria. Sometimes I wish I stood my grounds and refused their offer,
but I guess the urge to help my country was just too much to ignore.”
Oliseh, who once released a video to explain his falling out with
the NFF, then narrated how he and Enyeama, Mikel and Victor Moses got
off on the wrong foot.
He wrote: “My first official act was to call the team Captain Vincent
Enyeama (Lille OSC, France) to rub minds and fix an appointment to see
him. Same act was accorded to John Obi Mikel and Victor Moses of
Chelsea. All except for Obi Mikel picked up my call and Mikel even
ignored my eventual sms.
“Spent a lovely day at Lille with Enyeama, took him to lunch and
shared my Philosophy with him and he seemed genuinely inspired to work
together but kept on talking about pending retirement which we agreed he
would shelve aside till after AFCON 2017 at least.
“Went to London to see Mikel & Moses but could only see Moses as
Mikel did not reply my calls & we could not get a hold of him.
“Moses came 2 ½ half hours late to our meeting but none the less we
had a productive talk in company of my assistant, Jean Francois
Losciuto.
“Three weeks to my first official game in charge of the Super Eagles,
vs Tanzania, and the invitations were sent out to the clubs, 2 weeks to
the game Victor Moses opted out citing fear of contracting an injury
whilst playing for Nigeria in favour of his club via a written letter to
the Team manager of the super eagles.
“Most players reported to camp on Monday prior to the Tanzania game,
Vincent Enyeama was supposed to fly in Tuesday Morning, only for me to
be surprisingly informed via sms that he was skipping the game because
he lost the mum some weeks earlier.
“I called him up and made an agreement with him, as I needed not only
my captain and such a good goalkeeper for my opening game, that if he
came for the game on Friday I would release him to go to the village
after the game and skip the friendly game versus Niger scheduled for 3
days later after the Tanzania encounter, which he agreed.
“The team was scheduled to fly out on Thursday. On Wednesday
afternoon Enyeama called to say he was not coming for the game,
definitively.
“I was shocked as we had an agreement, we needed his experience,
leadership and I was aware he was yet to miss a training session for his
club side talk less of a league game.
“As faith will have it, with a brand new team that trained only for
two days we were able to come out of the Tanzania game with a point and
my newly discovered and talented goalkeeper, Carl Ikeme of Wolverhampton
was the man of the match. A 2-0 resounding victory over Niger 3 days
later gave a successful look to the first camping but cast questions on
if we could count on the three above named players to help us proceed. I
chose to build alternatives!”
Oliseh then added how NFF President Amaju Pinnick made false claims
regarding coaches being paid upfront and how his Belgian assistant
Jean-Louis Loscito escaped death.
He wrote: “On the day I was unveiled, the very vocal president of the
NFF, Amaju Pinnick boasted to the world that he was going to pay me 6
months’ salary in advance, we were never ever going to be owed as he had
procured sponsorship from Zenith bank, that he knows I am the African
Guardiola etc. declarations that not only added unnecessary pressure on
us but made us hated by certain quarters as ‘prima Donnas’. Far from
smart at all!
“We now know that, that was a ploy to make the world falsely believe
that I was giving all the tools to succeed whilst intending to
eventually starve us of tools to succeed in reality to have a scape goat
and employ his dream foreign coach for obvious reasons, as was tried
failingly recently!
“This false claim was repeated often by the Nff and Mr Pinnick often
in the following months whilst I was not only u paid but so were my
assistants too.
Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel has been appointed captain of Team Nigeria at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Manchester United midfielder Tosin Kehinde will play for the U21 team of the Old Trafford side in the 2016-2017 season.
The young Nigerian defender Ola Aina is training with the first team of Chelsea ahead of the new season.
