Super Eagles Chief Coach, Sunday Oliseh yesterday explained
why he left out Chelsea of England midfielder, John Mikel Obi from his list of
players invited for the forthcoming 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON)
qualifier against Tanzania. Oliseh who revealed this at a media parley in Abuja
said he made several phone calls including text messages to Obi’s number but he
never responded to any.
The former international who reluctantly spoke about the
issue of Obi revealed that he has no bias against anybody adding that under
him, the national team will not favour or malign any Nigerian player.
“Well this issue is an enigma and we have been trying to
understand it but I am in the dark personally, and with my assistants we spent
time about 11 days in and around Europe talking to players, watching games. We
contacted each of the players, call them up, call the clubs and eventually met
with the players.
“I went to England on a Thursday and Chelsea was just coming
back, we had fixed our visit to coincide with the end of their tour before they
played Arsenal. I contacted Obi Mikel, called him on phone four times, the
phone kept on ringing nobody picked it up, I sent him an SMS and got no
response. But I called Victor Moses the phone rang three times and he picked it
up and I spoke with him, told him to concentrate on his game.
After the game he came to my hotel and we met and I told him
my plans for the national team. I left to Liverpool to meet the other player
and I spent about six hours to go there and back but there was no response from
Mikel until I returned here.
I think it was yesterday (Wednesday) that I saw a missed
call, so at the moment I don’t know what the situation is. For me everybody is
the same and will be treated the same.”
He also gave words of encouragement to the home based
players by stating that any of them that proves his worth will be given the
opportunity to play, if they were better than their foreign based compatriots.
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