A player who was present when former coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Sunday OlIseh had a fallout with the duo of Mikel Obi and Vincent Enyeama has given his own version of the incident, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
The Former coach of the senior national team of Nigeria said the ex captain of the team John Obi Mikel needs help after tagging him as the worst coach to have ever handled the Super Eagles.
Speaking in his podcast Obione Mikel who had a huge fallout with Oliseh during his time as coach of the team tagged the former captain as the worst ever to have handled the team in recent times, saying he was confused and bitter.
“He (Oliseh) had absolutely no clue of how a manager is. He was a fantastic guy in his playing days, but as a coach, he was very terrible. He absolutely had no clue of what he was doing,” Mikel said on the ObiOne podcast.
“The players never understood anything he was doing, and he did not know what he was doing. He was just confused because he just came in and destroyed the team togetherness.
“His excuse when he got fired was that the people and FA did voodoo on him not to succeed. He was easily the worst manager I played under.
“He was so bitter with everybody, jealous with everybody, and had no respect for speaking to anybody, whether the physio or anybody.”
Reacting to the comments, Oliseh who was also a former Super Eagles captain said Mikel needs help throwing shades at him for trying to do what he couldn’t do as a footballer after his career.
“I think the kid (John Mikel Obi) needs some help. I think the boy needs some help”, he told Elegbete TV.
“I was voted the best coach in Holland at that time. I am the first and the only coloured player from sub saharan Africa to have ever won this award and at the same time with a club like Fortuna Sittard who had very average players, we were able to qualify for the second division from the last position to the first division where they are at the moment and they won a title.
” I don’t need to justify myself as a good coach to the kid, I call him the kid because my son is 27 years old and when he made this statement I heard about it but I will like to help the boy because I think he needs some help.
” You cannot become a legend with your mouth. You cannot achieve what you couldn’t achieve on the pitch as a footballer with talking and podcast”.
Speaking on the fallout, a member of the team around that time said Oliseh didn’t tell the entire truth and sided with the version of Mikel terming the reign of Oliseh as toxic and unorganized.
” I will rather go with what Mikel said because that was what happened before my eyes and everyone at the training pitch that day. The disrespect he showed Mikel and Enyeama left all of us in disbelief. A new coach going against the senior players in the team will always be a thing of shock.
” I really don’t know what transpired before then but what I saw before my eyes as well as other players was a total show of disrespect. As a team we didn’t recover from that incident. The entire incident made the camp toxic. He stripped Enyeama off the captain armband, benched Mikel and appointed a young Ahmed Musa as captain. Everything was so unorganized during his short reign as coach”, he rounded up saying.
