Austine Eguavoen has defended his decision to play Victor Osimhen as a substitute for the Super Eagles in their AFCON qualifiers games against Benin Republic and Rwanda respectively, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
Eguavoen who handled both games in interim capacity introduced Osimhen as a substitute in both games with the Napoli forward scoring the second goal in the 3-0 win over Benin Republic, but fired blanks yesterday in the 0-0 draw against Rwanda.
It led to questions on the reason why Osimhen played as a substitute, and the lack of sufficient game time given to Nottingham Forest forward Taiwo Awoniyi, who many expected to start of introduced earlier against Rwanda after playing no role in the win on Saturday.
Alex Iwobi was also an unused substitute yesterday, the same as Kelechi Iheanacho one of the senior players in the team but didn’t get a minute in both games. Eguavoen provided answers to the questions at the post match presser.
On Osimhen: ” You know Osimhen is our brother, he is our son. We cannot throw the bath water with the baby. and we all know what he is going through at Napoli and he just moved to Galatassary and haven’t played active football for a while and it’s something we try to manage his fitness. Against Benin Republic he played the last 25 minutes and today we had a word with him. He cannot play him for 90 minutes else he could get injured. It has been scientifically proven.
On Iheanacho, Awoniyi : Awoniyi also look at his stats, the last game before they all came he only had few minutes. Bottomline is we have 23 to 40, 50 talented player whom we can pick with from any given time. But in a game you cannot play all of them. It is difficult and players can be unhappy and frustrated over it. It’s normal but we hope they understand that if you are not called up or you don’t get to play you have to support the team.
