By the time you are reading this, I hope Victor Osimhen would have led the frontline of the Super Eagles to ‘destroy’ the national team of football minnows, Guinea Bissau, last night at the Moshood Abiola International Stadium, Abuja.

Anything short of a clear victory, with goals to shore up Osimhen’s chest in his chase of that exalted but difficult title of Highest Goal scorer in Nigerian football at international level, held since 1994 by Rashidi Yekini, and before that by ‘yours truly’ since 1981, would be totally unacceptable at this stage of Nigeria’s football development. Guinea Bissau are not only one of the smallest countries in Africa in size, there is a whole planet between them and Nigeria in football.

Having said that, I hope, at the time you are reading this on Saturday morning, the Eagles would have won well.

Outside of that match, what has engaged my mind these past few days and dominated the media space is the matter of Ike Sorounmu, the shy, quiet, gentleman and former goalkeeper of the Super Eagles. Before now, Ike’s voice in Nigerian football has never risen beyond the decibels of gentle instructions doled out on the training ground of clubs and the national team as goalkeeper-trainer. He has played role of an assistant coach very diligently for many years and through several regimes of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF.

By the way, the only former goalkeeper to have served as Chief coach of the national team in Nigeria’s history is late Carl Odw’yer in the mid-1970s.

This past week, Ike’s voice has been rather loud, bitter and strident, unusually rising above the din of the match between the Super Eagles and the underdogs from Guinea Bissau.

Ike Sorunmu, nick-named Anobi and Omo Alaja, by his fans and friends, was very angry with the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, about the treatment meted to him; in the manner he was disallowed from being a part of the national technical crew for the Guinea Bissau match, and in the complete silence about the non-payment of money owed him from his recent services to the national team. In addition, nothing was said about his request to be offered either a permanent appointment, or to be engaged on a contract for his services in the national team. Meanwhile, he had sought, without success, for refund of the expenses he personally incurred, known and approved by the NFF, in honouring his most recent invitations to the national team.

Even as he awaited the official call-up to the team last week, what he received instead was a call from an officer in the NFF secretariat directing him not to bother to report to Abuja for preparation for yesterday’s match. Instead he was to be replaced by a goalkeeper trainer from the Junior national team who had just completed another national assignment.

Read Also:https://www.completesports.com/ike-sorounmu-unfortunate-poor-treatment-of-a-national-hero-odegbami/

NFF is the problem of Nigeria's football, they will employ substandard foreign coaches and be expecting good results when we have a better indigenous coach that can perform exceedingly better than them, but because of selfishness and greediness, they will not consider the better indigenous coaches.
Their actions also dent our national heroes, for Nigeria's football to perform better we need a total clear-out of the NFF, those directing the affairs don't have enough knowledge of football.

Appointment to coach a team is not by force. If he is owed by NFF, let him go to court instead of going all over the place to blackmail people.

This is very sad.

I wonder why former footballers still want to work with NFF. In their playing days NFF defaulted so many times in obligations to them, is it now NFF will change when they are no longer in the limelight