Recent listless performance by the Super Eagles including the dramatic 4-4 draw and drab goalless draw against the Leone Stars in the 2021 AFCON double header in Benin and Freetown respectively have partly been attributed to poor playing surfaces.
This much was highlighted by the chief executive officer of Monimichelle, Ebi Egbe even as he rallied support for the under-fire Super Eagles German coach Gernot Rohr.
The head of the wave-making sports facility construction outfit, said the Super Eagles would surely find their mojo should the team be offered the necessary support by football stakeholders.
“Super Eagles is our team and to be honest, I think we have a very good team made up of good players,” Egbe explained.
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“I make bold to say that the Super Eagles will do very well at the next Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroun and they can lift that cup because we have the players.
“What we have presently in the Super Eagles are refined players and many of them grew up training and playing under smooth surfaces and as we all know, the AFCON pitches are always refined tournament pitches which do not outlive the tournament for which they are constructed… I think we are going to see the best of our team in Cameroun.”
Egbe who is handling renovation of numerous playing facilities around the country, said coach Rohr should be supported than constant bashing of the team when things go awry, adding the Super Eagles cannot do well without the support of all and sundry.
“I don’t think the coach (Gernot Rohr) is bad. We have to give him the necessary tools in order for him to succeed because he can’t do it alone; and that I think is the honest truth. He can’t succeed alone; most people might not really understand when I dwelled on the fact that we have ‘refined players’ and because of their up-bringing, we just need to give them refined pitches to play upon.”
Egbe stressed that Sierra Leone did their homework on our players, hence they took them to the “rice field” in Freetown where no player can play to his full potentials.
“I repeat that we need not to make our players struggle in home and away games. At home, our boys should enjoy the luxury of playing on the kind of pitches they play on out there in Europe and this is why I m clamoring for Nigeria to have world class pitches…pitches with zero undulation and lush green.”
Egbe re-echoed the vision of his outfit which is the eradication of bad pitches not just in Nigeria but the African continent.
